New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-05-29

which does not appear to have been told. IS
uniquely interesting. 1t is about peculiar the
story of poet well could be. In the Law College of
Cornell University to-day there lectures daily to large
classes of students venerable of seventy-seven
who for years has been known as one of the ripe and
powerful legal minds of the country In 1880 he
appointed Associate Judge of the Court of
Appeals to NIL rneXpired term of SIX months; was
reapponted to fill an unexpired term of one YEAR
and then duly elected for the full term of four
years. In 1905 he too the age limit for
reelection In 1901 he accepted the post of Dean of
the Law College at Cornell with which college he
had been connected from its earliest beginnings
as counsel and patron. He filled the post of Dean
until the burdens became too great, and then
became Professor of History and Evolution of Law
which post he still fills actively.
This patriarch of seventy-seven, driving through
a binding snow-storm for a mile, deliver his lee
lures is a sight of valued activity in old age which
does not often His extraordinary grasp
upon life is shown in his remark: Why | would
rather lecture those boys than do anything else
in the world" Herein is a love of the law which
has been a lifelong passion. When | am too old
for work" he adds Il shall settle down in nv Il
brary. There twenty-One hundred volumes
there which represent the careful selection of life
time-my only extravaganza There Is a book
the shelves which carefully read
and weighed before it found place there and
they represent a charm that will be
failing"
As the Judge sits in his library where forty years
ago he composed the poem, his deliCately cut fea-
lures and high forehead reveal the poet quite as
much the lawyer, if not His salient
possession of the poetic faculty manifest during
his Yale in his editorship of the Yale Lit
erary Magazine, and such songs of his Gather
We Smiles - Smoking Song" Nathan Hale" and
'LinOna, were long popular at his Alma Mater. He
had equal gifts an impromptu speaker and SEN
Tor took the Commencement Grafton, the lawyer and
the poet in him beginning their struggle thus early.
After graduation, however, he devoted himself
entirely TO the law. Il had great love of the law,
he says; land for the profession of literature.
while | cannot say that | feared it, had great
respect for it. The law dominated imagination.
and such literary gift as / had ChaStened and
Choked down by the graver study. Admitted to
the bar he began TO practise in his birthplace.
Ithaca, where his father had been lawyer before
him. and steadily to the honorable position
which has been described
None the less, the poetic faculty would not be
choked, and this eminent judge has been poet all
his life He smiles as he places before YOU ponder
bundle of typewriter manuscript. 1t
siSts entirely of poems, and would or will make a
volume of from three 10 four hundred pages.
All my life have written verses whenever | felt
like it, he says, They usually inspired by
National incident of interest, in this case:
He hands YOU a poem called g At Breakfast" which
Manila, and with touch of sardOnic hunOr de
scribeS the shot and she'll which formed the break
fast of the ships of Spain. Its buoyant ring, its
tone of patriotic enthusiasm, perhaps even
remarkable than its technical perfection, as the
effortess production of and Judge at
seventy-fve.
The Blue and The Gray" was the only poem
ever published" he SAYS. II did not feel that the
publication of poems compatible with the Dig
nifty of Judge of the Court of Appeals. None the
less. / have written poetry all my hfe-hght and
grave, short and long. as YOU see. Whether or not