The Lawyer as an Artist. 
 
 Address before the Women Lawyers' Club of New 
 York City at its meeting February 23, 
 1905, at the National Arts Club, 37 
 West 34th Street, New York. 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER S. LOGAN. 
 
lEx ICtbrtH 
 
 SEYMOUR DURST 
 
 When you leave, please leave this book 
 
 Because it has been said 
 "Ever'thing comes t' him who waits 
 
 Except a loaned book." 
 
 Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
THE LAWYER AS AN ARTIST. 
 
 Webster defines science as " accumulated and established 
 knowledge." He defines art as " the application of knowl- 
 edge or power to practical purposes." 
 
 J. F. Genung says : 
 
 " Science is systematized knowledge ; art is knowl- 
 edge made efficient by skill." 
 
 Jurisprudence is the science of the law, its statics. 
 
 Its dynamics are in the everyday work of the lawyer who 
 makes efficient by his skill as an artist the knowledge that 
 is found in the jurisprudence. The good lawyer is the man 
 who practices his profession as a live art, the man who 
 accomplishes things. 
 
 We have lawyers who devote themselves to jurisprudence, 
 who are very learned in the law ; but unless they combine 
 the skill of the artist with the knowledge of the scientist 
 they are not the moving factors in our profession. The 
 opinion of such men even on a pure and simple question 
 of law is sometimes less to be relied on than the opinion of 
 the practical man whose feet touch earth and whose head 
 is far below the sky. I would often rather have a good 
 guess from some lawyers I know who could not quote 
 authorities, but whose nervous systems are well attuned to 
 the practice of the profession, than the labored researches 
 of other lawyers who are fuller of precedents, but who are 
 without the quick practical judgment that characterizes the 
 
man of action. It is, however, comparatively seldom that 
 the lawyer is called upon for a legal opinion on a straight 
 and simple question of law. In practical life the facts and 
 the law get most irretrievably mixed and it takes the artist 
 to sort them out. The scientist may be of use after the sort- 
 ing has been done, but he is almost helpless if he has to do 
 the sorting. The giving of opinions, however, is a small 
 part of a lawyer's real work. Clients come to us for results, 
 not for opinions. The lawyer that the client seeks and that 
 the community needs is the man who can do things, who 
 can get results, who can save the situation. 
 
 They tell a story of the campaign in the Wilderness. One 
 of the commanders had to put his army across a river which 
 could neither be forded nor ferried, so he had to have a 
 bridge. The engineers went to work busily upon the plans, 
 but there was a practical country carpenter in one of the 
 regiments who made his way to headquarters and said: 
 " Gineral, if you want a bridge I kin build you one." The 
 general said : " Go out and see what you can do and report 
 to me at 6 o'clock to-night." At 6 o'clock the country 
 carpenter was there with his report, as follows : " Gineral, 
 that bridge is built and the army is on its way over, but 
 them picters that them other fellers is making ain't done 
 yit." The practical man had put the army across the river 
 while the engineers were designing the bridge. The situa- 
 tions that are to be saved, the triumphs that are to be won, 
 do not always wait for logical sequences. A lawyer who is 
 called up by his client at 10 minutes to 3 in the afternoon 
 for instructions how to close out a hundred thousand dollar 
 trade before 3 o'clock, so as to save his client from loss and 
 prevent a suit for damages, has not much time to examine 
 law books. The real artist of a lawyer at such a moment 
 will firmly grip the rudder and steer his client safely through. 
 The scientist lawyer will logically work out some plan for 
 his client's salvation, perhaps, but too late to save him. The 
 
 4 
 
lawyer artist will win fame and money while the lawyer 
 scientist grows poor. 
 
 Here, therefore, to-night, in the galleries of the National 
 Arts Club where we are assembled, I plead the cause of the 
 lawyer as an artist before an audience who were artists 
 before they were lawyers. 
 
 The lawyer is, I claim, the highest product of human 
 evolution. The civilization of any nation may be measured 
 by the number of its lawyers. It is not necessary for me 
 to prove in this place and before this audience that the 
 United States is the most civilized nation in the world, and 
 the statistics show that it has twice as many lawyers in 
 proportion to its population as any other country has. Eng- 
 land comes next in the degree of its civilization and in the 
 number of its lawyers. France and Germany follow. Russia 
 has more priests and less lawyers in proportion to the popu- 
 lation than any other country in Europe, and if you pass 
 over to the Orient, where modern civilization is struggling 
 with ancient barbarism, you have to search far and long 
 before you can find a lawyer of any kind. 
 
 There is another reason for the great prevalence of law- 
 yers among the English-speaking peoples of the world. We 
 were the first race to safeguard our liberties by institutions, 
 and it is only where liberty has been so safeguarded that 
 the science of jurisprudence or the art of practising law 
 can flourish. In every country in the world where any 
 other language is spoken the declaration or complaint or 
 petition which is the initiatory proceeding in a lawsuit ends 
 with a prayer for judgment. Among our English-speaking 
 commonwealths alone do we conclude with a demand. For 
 a long time in England the distinction was made between 
 a declaration at common law and a bill in equity. The 
 common law declaration demanded judgment, the bill in 
 equity prayed for it. The original theory was that at law 
 the suitor was seeking his rights ; in equity he was asking 
 
 5 
 
a favor. But the reason and the result have both disap- 
 peared. Into a modern equity court the suitor comes now 
 as much as a matter of right as into a court of law, and so, 
 wherever the English language is spoken — with few excep- 
 tions which are matters of form only — we conclude our 
 initial equity pleading with a demand for judgment. The 
 English-speaking suitor has no favor to ask when he comes 
 into court. He comes to demand a right. No other race 
 in the world pays such a regard to judicial precedent as we 
 do. I called on a prominent lawyer in the City of Mexico 
 one time. I asked him to show me his library. L would 
 like to look, I said, at the decisions of their Supreme Court. 
 He said : " Mr. Logan, we have no decisions as you under- 
 stand the word. I can show you a book of sentences — 
 judgments in particular cases — but our courts decide each 
 case upon its particular equities without regard to previous 
 decisions." If a judge who is in charge of a case thinks 
 that a rule laid down in some other case would not work 
 equity in the case he is trying, or is not to his liking, he 
 disregards it. If he is a just judge he seeks to do justice 
 in that case without regard to any other cases that have 
 ever been decided by any other judge. The theory is a 
 beautiful one, but in practice it is arbitrary in the extreme. 
 It puts the judge above the law. Under our practice the 
 judge is nothing, the court is everything, the law is supreme. 
 Under the Latin practice, which prevails now in most coun- 
 tries which speak some other language than ours, the judge 
 is supreme. He is bound by the law if it is in the form 
 of a statute, but he knows no other law. Precedent is of 
 little importance. 
 
 No other race in the world dignifies its lawyers as ours 
 does. With us the lawyer is a part of the court. The 
 court consists of one or more lawyers on one side the bench 
 and all the other lawyers on the other side. It is the duty 
 of the lawyers before the bench to present the facts and 
 
 6 
 
make the arguments. It is the duty of the lawyers behind 
 the bench to decide conflicting points of evidence and deter- 
 mine disputed points of law. 
 
 There is now but little difference in dignity between the 
 lawyers on one side of the bench and the other. In Eng- 
 land the lawyers on both sides wear wigs and gowns to 
 differentiate them from the rest of the world. In this coun- 
 try we have not adopted the wig, and the gown when worn 
 is confined to the lawyers behind the bench — and to the lady 
 lawyers in front. The logic of the English practice is 
 better than ours. The judge is no more sacred than the 
 advocate. The reason we do not wear the gown before the 
 bar here is, I imagine, because we are in too much of a 
 hurry and do not care to take the time to put it on. 
 
 Among all the other races in the world the lawyer is 
 regarded simply as a servant of the court. The initiative 
 is taken by the judge. The examination of witnesses is 
 usually conducted by the judge. Cross-examination is an 
 unpractised art. The lawyer is little more than an attendant 
 of the court to do its bidding. I remember being interested 
 in a case tried in a country where the practice introduced 
 by the Code Napoleon prevailed. When testimony was 
 taken the witness and the judge retired to a closet and the 
 testimony was taken in secret. I asked a lawyer friend of 
 mine what the judge did in the closet. The answer was: 
 " He took evidence." I asked if he took anything else, 
 and the reply was: " Not if he's an honest judge." 
 
 All the lawyer can do is to wait outside till the judge 
 gets through with the witness, and then later, when he is 
 given a copy of the testimony, he has the distinguished 
 honor of being allowed to file a brief. 
 
 No wonder is it that the lawyer as an artist flourishes 
 only where the tongue of Blackstone is spoken. 
 
 The trial is the distinguishing characteristic of our 
 Saxon jurisprudence. There comes a time in the history 
 
 7 
 
of every litigation, if it pursues its natural course, when 
 plaintiff and defendant must be opposed to one another on 
 the firing line in court and the case must be tried. The 
 judge is there to help neither plaintiff nor defendant. He 
 is not there to conduct the trial. That is done by the law- 
 yers. He is there simply to decide disputed questions which 
 arise in the course of the trial and to keep order. Where 
 the lawyers agree the judge has little to do. Where the 
 lawyers differ he decides between them. 
 
 It is an atmosphere in which the lawyer as an artist flour- 
 ishes. 
 
 The Saxon suitor has been brought up in the civilization 
 of self-reliance. He has made his own way in the world 
 from the beginning. He has lived under no paternal gov- 
 ernment. The rain of Heaven has not been showered on 
 him for his virtues or withheld from him for his sins. He 
 has had just what he could win. He is in court just what 
 he is in his everyday life — a man fighting the battles of the 
 world on his own account, asking favors of nobody and 
 seeking not for any privilege, but simply for his rights. In 
 court as out of court all he asks for is a fair field and no 
 favors — an even chance. The lawyer is the representative 
 of the suitor, and he occupies a position of dignity which 
 the lawyer of no other race in the world can approach. 
 Among no other peoples of the world is there a provision 
 in their jurisprudence for the real equivalent of our trial. 
 Among other peoples a lawsuit progresses from its inception 
 to its end, and some result is evolved, but the result is ordi- 
 narily reached not by a decisive trial at some point in the 
 history of the litigation, but by a gradual progress from the 
 beginning to the end. Some other countries, it is true, have 
 copied our constitutions and imitated our institutions and 
 have evolved something the apparent equivalent of our trial, 
 but it is a graft upon an uncongenial stock, and while the 
 Saxon form is there it is the Latin spirit that prevails. The 
 
 8 
 
judge is till the dominant figure. The lawyer takes a baek 
 seat. The artist has no chance. 
 
 The dignity of our profession among our Saxon peoples 
 is due to the fact that in the administration of justice the 
 lawyer does take the principal part. The genius of the 
 artist is called for. The judge is only an incident. The 
 law, with the artist lawyer as its instrument, rules supreme. 
 
 Ours is truly a land governed by law. I had some busi- 
 ness one time which led me to have an interview with the 
 President of one of the Latin republics of our continent. 
 It related to a railroad that was partly in his country and 
 partly in ours. He asked : " What does your President, Mr. 
 McKinley, think about this matter? " I said: " The courts 
 have decided in our favor. Mr. McKinley himself has prob- 
 ably never heard of it." "What!" he replied, "an import- 
 ant case like this escapes the notice of your President!" It 
 was hard for him to understand that on this side the border, 
 where we speak the English language, the executive had 
 no judicial power or influence. On our side the border it 
 was not what President McKinley thought, but what the 
 courts decided to be the law, that controlled the situation. 
 
 Of course it would be unfair to compare our system with 
 that of Russia, where the will of an autocrat is all the law 
 there is. He may lay down rules for his own convenience 
 which he may call the law, but the rules he lays down are 
 binding only so long as he chooses to follow them. In 
 Russia the executive power is everything. There are no 
 courts that are free and independent like ours, and a court 
 that is not free and independent of the executive power is 
 no court at all. The artistic practice of the law in such 
 a country and under such conditions cannot flourish. The 
 lawyer as such cannot be an important factor in the social 
 economy. But on all the Continent of Europe the same 
 conditions prevail, though in a less degree. The Kaiser 
 chafes under his restraints and yearns for a free hand like 
 
 9 
 
his cousin the Czar, though I think the developments of the 
 last few months have somewhat modified his yearnings in 
 that regard. In France, though it is a republic, the courts 
 are more or less under executive influence. No jurisprudence 
 based on the Code Napoleon can be the basis of free courts 
 such as we have. The common law was evolved by a coun- 
 try that loved its liberties. The Code Napoleon was the 
 work of a despot. In England alone of all European coun- 
 tries are the courts free and independent, and in England 
 alone of all the countries of Europe does the lawyer occupy 
 his proper place in the social economy. The first condition 
 of real political freedom is a free judiciary, and it is only 
 under a free judiciary that a great bar can be evolved to 
 practise before it — that the lawyer can be an artist. 
 
 To my mind the longest single step that civilization has 
 ever taken was the evolution of the art of cross-examination, 
 and it was the work entirely of our race and our profession. 
 Before that art was evolved a disputed question of fact was 
 usually settled by the method known as the " wager of 
 battle." The plaintiff asserted a fact, the defendant denied 
 it, and then they or their champions took their horses and 
 their spears and fought it out to see who told the truth. 
 There are some things in favor of this method of trial. It 
 was speedy and decisive. The jury never disagreed. The 
 judge never set aside the verdict and judgments were never 
 reversed on appeal, but, notwithstanding, it was not alto- 
 gether satisfactory. A small man stood a poor chance of 
 having his word taken against a big one unless he could 
 get a champion to fight for him, and champions came high. 
 
 Later, when they got to administering oaths in the courts 
 of justice, the plaintiff and defendant each tried to out- 
 number the other in the matter of witnesses, and seven wit- 
 nesses always prevailed over six. This was a straight- 
 forward and easy method of settling the controversy. The 
 judge or jury had only to count noses. It did not require 
 
 10 
 
great intellectual acumen to decide the case. But still even 
 this was unsatisfactory to our restless ancestors. There 
 arose a race of swearers, and the man who had the most 
 money to pay subpoena fees won his case. Perjury became 
 prevalent, and a state of things came to pass compared with 
 which the swearing off of personal taxes downtown in the 
 Stewart Building every year would be considered an inno- 
 cent diversion. The name of the lawyer who first essayed 
 to cross-examine a witness to determine whether he was 
 telling the truth or a lie has been lost in the mists of history. 
 It is a pity, for he started the greatest reform that the world 
 has ever known. With that lawyer and on that day the art 
 of practising law really began. Thenceforward and for- 
 ever there was some test other than that of physical strength 
 or elasticity of conscience by which truth could be deter- 
 mined. The name of the man is unknown. Even the cen- 
 tury in which he lived is unknown, although if we should 
 put it in the twelfth or thirteenth century we should not go 
 far wrong ; but his race and his country are not unknown. 
 The art of cross-examination was developed by our race 
 among our ancestors on the green isle of Albion. It has 
 evolved from that day to this, and to-day it is the most 
 important art known to our civilization. The services of 
 the lawyer who can cross-examine are sought wherever 
 courts are open, and the great cross-examiner can win more 
 compensation in less time than any other man who works 
 for his bread. I will send my office clerk, if need be, to 
 argue a case in the Court of Appeals, but I will cross-exam- 
 ine the witnesses myself. 
 
 The lawyer as an artist first took his place in history with 
 the practice of the art of cross-examination. 
 
 There is another characteristic of our profession as prac- 
 tised among the peoples of our race. It is their fidelity. 
 Lawyers in their everyday lives are perhaps not better than 
 other men, though I certainly would not concede superiority 
 
 ii 
 
to any other class in the community. They have their weak- 
 nesses and their vices. They love money, like other men, 
 and they will sometimes violate the moral and the legal law 
 to get it, but the lawyer is faithful to his client. During 
 the practice of law in this city for a period longer than 
 most of you have lived, coming in contact as I have with 
 many thousand members of our profession, in matters 
 almost numberless, 1 have never found half a dozen in- 
 stances where a lawyer abused the trust that his client had 
 confided in him. I have known members of my profession 
 commit about all the other sins there are on the calendar, 
 and do about all the other mean things that could be con- 
 ceived, but where a client has trusted his case to them they 
 have been faithful to that trust. It is not a peculiarity of 
 great lawyers or of lawyers of unusual moral fibre. The 
 youngest member of the profession just admitted to the bar, 
 or the wickedest lawyer in the town, may be as faithful as 
 the lawyer whose head is crowned with silver and who has 
 won his honors and his fame. There is a degree of fidelity 
 of counsel to client that is not found in any other relation- 
 ship in life. Husbands betray their wives, children their par- 
 ents, business men their partners, common men their friends ; 
 but where the Saxon race is dominant and the English 
 language is spoken lawyers do not betray their clients. 
 Fidelity to a trust is artistic, and in this as in other respects 
 the lawyer is an artist. 
 
 The lawyer is able to put himself in another's place as no 
 other man can. He is, therefore, able to give advice 
 to his client which is generally sane and safe even upon sub- 
 jects with which he is little familiar. The man who consults 
 his lawyer about an intricate business problem usually gets 
 good advice, and if the lawyer was consulted oftener and 
 his advice followed more closely there would be more uni- 
 form business success and fewer great business disasters. 
 The fact is that the lawyer is trained from the beginning 
 
 12 
 
of his practice as no other man in the community is trained, 
 to act for another man. The true lawyer will never com- 
 plicate himself so that he is unable to look at any question 
 from his client's standpoint. He will of all things avoid 
 having any personal interest in the matter in controversy. 
 He will save himself and all his energies to be used in his 
 client's behalf. Our profession is pre-eminently a profes- 
 sion of trust and confidence, and it is the glory of the pro- 
 fession that that trust and confidence is so seldom misplaced. 
 
 The pre-eminently successful lawyer is not, therefore, 
 necessarily the man of pre-eminent learning or the man of 
 ripe and mature judgment upon legal questions. He is the 
 man who can pierce the armor of a lying witness on cross- 
 examination, who can present the facts of his case clearly, 
 succinctly and plausibly, who can advise his client wisely 
 and convincingly and promptly, and can guide him with 
 unerring steps round all the pitfalls of his business life — 
 the lawyer who is the true artist. 
 
 Much has been said and written about the limits of the 
 lawyer's profession. I claim for it wide limits. I reject 
 petty limitations. Any work is within the lawyer's sphere 
 that he can do better than anyone else, provided only it is 
 done for some one else. The only limitation I put on our 
 professional activities is that we must always be working 
 for another man. The lawyer must never be personally 
 interested in the result. He must always be a representative, 
 not a principal. 
 
 But if his client is on the verge of failure because of bad 
 business methods, it is not unprofessional for him to take 
 the initiative and inaugurate business reforms that will save 
 the situation. If his client needs capital for his business 
 he may properly put him in contact with men who can 
 furnish it and help him get it, only it must not be the law- 
 yer's own money, for then he becomes a business partner 
 and not a lawyer. 
 
 13 
 
If the initiative is to be taken in the organization of some- 
 thing to which the business man is unaccustomed or inade- 
 quate, the lawyer may properly take that initiative. He may 
 be president of large corporations and the responsible head 
 of great industrial organizations without losing his profes- 
 sional identity or lowering his professional flag. There are 
 no better railroad presidents in this broad land of ours than 
 those who have been taken from the ranks of our profession, 
 and there are no more honorable lawyers than those who 
 have demonstrated their superior executive capacity in 
 executive positions. There are no safer bank presidents 
 than those who belong to our profession, and many lawyers 
 have shed lustre on it by their achievements in finance. In 
 every position where trust or responsibility has to be im- 
 posed by one or many men on another man, the lawyer may 
 properly occupy the position of trust and responsibility. 
 Whenever there is work to be done for others that other 
 men cannot do, the lawyer may properly do it. The lawyer 
 ought to be the most capable man in every community in 
 which he lives, and as the most capable man he must per- 
 force occupy the position of greatest responsibility. 
 
 When it comes to practising in the courts he, of course, 
 has no competitor. Justice represents man's highest evolu- 
 tion. Its administration must be in the hands of the best 
 and most capable of men. The approach to the Temple of 
 Justice should be opened wide to suitors, but none must be 
 allowed to assist in its administration except the very best 
 and most worthy. 
 
 I claim, therefore, for our profession the primacy among 
 professions. The soldier and the sailor risk their lives in 
 defense of the institutions and flag of their country; but 
 it is the lawyer who formulates and maintains those institu- 
 tions and makes that flag worth saving. The clergyman 
 preaches from the pulpit the gospel of peace on earth ; but 
 it is the practical work of the lawyer that makes that peace 
 
possible. The physician cures the physical ills of humanity ; 
 but in these days, when we have found that perhaps the 
 highest work of the Legislature is in enacting a proper sani- 
 tary code, the attorney for the Health Board often saves 
 more lives than a hundred doctors. The engineer lays his 
 iron rails under mountains, across plains and over conti- 
 nents; but he cannot put his pick into the ground or lift his 
 first shovelful of earth until the lawyer has got him his 
 right of way. Men of science delve deep into the mysteries 
 of Nature and try to wrest from unwilling Earth the secrets 
 of her processes ; but it is the lawyer who defends the 
 patentee and makes the discoveries of men of science valu- 
 able to themselves and available to the community. In these 
 days there are other professions coming up every day and 
 on every side, but they all depend for their success upon 
 their abiding faith that the lawyer will maintain existing 
 institutions and protect vested rights. 
 
 The crowning triumph of our present civilization is in 
 the successful establishment and maintenance of our existing 
 courts of justice. It is the perfection of these that makes 
 property possible and life worth living. It is the existence 
 of these and the respect paid to them by the community 
 that makes social life and the perpetuation of social insti- 
 tutions practicable. It is to our courts of justice more than 
 to any other institution of modern civilization that we owe 
 all that lifts modern man above the barbarity of his primitive 
 ancestors. All this was the work of the lawyer. 
 
 The last step that has been taken in completing the struct- 
 ure of our modern civilization and in bringing to man the 
 full fruition of his untold generations of struggle is the 
 establishment of the International Tribunal of The Hague 
 for the settlement of differences between nations ; the substi- 
 tution of an international court of justice in the place of 
 the marshalling of soldiers upon tented fields, — of the law- 
 yer's brief for the Gatling gun. That step, too, I am proud 
 
 *5 
 
to say, was very largely the work of lawyers. I remember 
 with great pride that it was the New York State Bar Asso- 
 ciation that proposed the first practical plan for an inter- 
 national court. That plan was in the hands of New York's 
 great citizen, Andrew D. White, when he won his great 
 triumph at the Hague Conference, in the establishment of 
 the Hague Tribunal, and it was that plan that was adopted 
 in all its essential features by the Conference and by the 
 nations of the earth that ratified their work. 
 
 There is nothing in which progress in modern times is 
 more marked than in the methods of writing history, and 
 modern history is coming to give a lesser place to the soldier 
 and a greater place to the lawyer in the evolution of the 
 world's civilization. Germans are proud of their Von 
 Moltke the soldier, but they are prouder still of Bismarck 
 the Chancellor. Frenchmen honor their Napoleon, but I 
 think they honor him as much for his code — the code of 
 despotism though it be — as for his victories in battle. No 
 one would ever ask the men of Holland to place any name 
 out of the multitude of great names in their proud history 
 above that of William the Silent. But we in this day and 
 generation are coming to give them a double crown of 
 glory, and to place side by side with that of the Prince of 
 Orange the name of their own great Hugo Grotius. 
 
 Englishmen celebrate the destruction of the Armada and 
 the victories of Blenheim and Waterloo and Trafalgar, but 
 they celebrate with equal enthusiasm the occurrence on that 
 green isle of Runnymede, where one afternoon the barons 
 wrested from the unwilling hands of King John the Great 
 Charter of Anglican liberty, and they celebrate, too, the 
 memory of those brave and learned men in Parliament and 
 out of it who gave to England and to us their Bill of Rights. 
 They celebrate the memory of John Hampden, who refused 
 to pay ship money, even more than that of Oliver Cromwell, 
 who won the battle of Naseby. They write in letters of 
 
 16 
 
ever-living light the name of their William of Orange, the 
 great grandson of a great grandfather, but they celebrate 
 his memory not so much because he hurled back the legions 
 of Louis of France as because of what he did to found on 
 its present enduring basis the everlasting structure of their 
 and our free institutions. The victory won by their Lord 
 Grey in the passage of the Reform Bill was greater than 
 that won by Wellington at Waterloo. Englishmen honor 
 Wilberforce as much as they honor Nelson, and no soldier 
 or sailor of modern times has ever occupied a place in their 
 hearts equal to that occupied by John Bright and William 
 Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 We Americans honor the great name of our own great 
 Washington, but history is now writing Washington at his 
 greatest and his best not as commander of the forces of the 
 Revolutionary War, but as Chairman of the Constitutional 
 Convention of 1789, and as first President of the United 
 States. Alexander Hamilton, side by side with Lafayette, 
 stormed the forts at Yorktown, but we have almost for- 
 gotten that brave and brilliant exploit in our memory of 
 what he did in establishing upon a firm and enduring 
 foundation the Government of the United States. All over 
 the land we rear monuments to the memory of Greene, and 
 Putnam, and Sullivan, and Morgan, and Wayne, and other 
 heroes of the Revolution, but we are now coming to recog- 
 nize that John Marshall, the lawyer, did more to make the 
 American nation than all of them. 
 
 Half the nation celebrates with loud enthusiasm the mem- 
 ory of Andrew Jackson, and the other half celebrates it too, 
 only a little more quietly ; but it is Andrew Jackson, author 
 of the Nullification proclamation, rather than Andrew Jack- 
 son, the victor at New Orleans, whose memory we most 
 honor. 
 
 When we write the history of our Civil War we cover 
 with glory the names of Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, 
 
 '7 
 
and Farragut, and other soldiers and sailors ; but towering 
 way above them all stands the sublime figure of Abraham 
 Lincoln, the lawyer. 
 
 A few years ago we were welcoming home the heroes of 
 the Spanish War. We showered our honors upon Dewey, 
 and Sampson, and Schley, and Merritt, and Shafter, and 
 Joe Wheeler, and Roosevelt ; but while we have been honor- 
 ing all these men — our soldiers and our sailors — with well- 
 deserved honors, we have never forgotten what we owed 
 to the cool head and steady hand of the Supreme Com- 
 mander-in-Chief through that war of the Army and Navy 
 of the United States — William McKinley, the lawyer. Nor 
 have we forgotten that the practical results of the war were 
 obtained for our nation very largely by the lawyer members 
 of the Peace Commission in Paris and by the labors of 
 William H. Taft — lawyer and judge — in the Philippines. 
 The best Secretary of the Navy we ever had was Benjamin 
 F. Tracy, a lawyer. The best Secretary of War, Elihu 
 Root, another lawyer. And they are both better lawyers 
 to-day than they were before they were at the head of the 
 army and navy departments of the United States. 
 
 I have thus far spoken of lawyers in the masculine gender. 
 If I had so spoken as of the time when I commenced the 
 practice of the law here in New York I should not need 
 to make any explanation. When I came to the bar I do 
 not remember that there was a woman lawyer in all the 
 world. Now we find women lawyers in the courts of almost 
 all the States of the American Union. It used to be thought 
 a good joke to consult a woman lawyer, but a great many 
 of us have found it was something more than a joke to 
 have one retained upon the other side of the case. 
 
 There is a story told of a dusky queen on some island in 
 the South Pacific not ten thousand miles from that Manila 
 Bay where Dewey one Sunday morning planted the Stars 
 and Stripes seven thousand miles farther west than it had 
 
 18 
 
ever been planted before. This queen had in some way 
 acquired a greater knowledge and insight into things than 
 her subjects, and she viewed with disfavor the superstition 
 that she saw around her. One day she called her subjects 
 together and she said to them : " You think that yonder burn- 
 ing mountain is a god. It is not. That is simply common 
 ordinary fire, just like the fire which you put under your ket- 
 tles when you cook your dinners, only there is more of it. It 
 is a volcano, a natural phenomenon. Do you not believe me? 
 Come and see!" And they followed her to the foot of the 
 mountain, and they saw her climb its craggy summit, and 
 they heard her revile the god that they supposed to be within, 
 and they saw her pick up sticks and stones and throw them 
 into the crater in derision, and they saw her pull her slipper 
 from her dusky foot and throw it in, and they heard her 
 say: "If you be really a god, come forth and avenge the 
 insult !" But the mountain burned on and harmed her not, 
 and she led her people back, and the superstition that the 
 burning mountain was a god was gone forever. 
 
 A generation or so ago some other women, fairer than 
 my dusky queen, but with the same proud spirit, said to 
 their sisters : " The idea that prevails throughout the world 
 that a woman must not work ; that she must have no ambi- 
 tions ; that she must be contented to follow in man's path 
 and do his bidding, is all wrong. Do you not believe us? 
 We will show you. We will go down into the marts of 
 trade and we will win business success equal to that of our 
 brothers. We will go into the professions and we will win 
 a place on an even footing with them there and gain equal 
 honors and equal fame. We will go everywhere that man 
 goes and do everything that he does, and be successful as 
 he is successful, doing our full share of the world's work 
 and bearing our full share of the world's burdens, and then 
 we will go back to our parlors and be the loveliest women 
 
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in the land." And they did it. And the superstition that 
 woman to be lovely must be useless is gone forever. 
 
 Among the professions which she chose was, fortunately, 
 our profession of the law, and every year more and more 
 women are coming to practise in the courts of the American 
 nation, and to do their duty as lawyers in the community, 
 and every year their influence is being felt in these courts 
 and in the community more and more for civilization, for 
 humanity and for righteousness, and now when, here in 
 this great city of New York, I find such a flourishing 
 Women Lawyers' Club as is meeting here to-night, I feel 
 that the future of the land I love so well is better assured 
 than ever before, and that the prosperity and happiness of 
 the American people has a broader foundation now that its 
 basis is laid upon the ability and energy of both sexes instead 
 of one of them — now that the foundation is as broad as the 
 structure that is reared upon it. 
 
 I am a little late in doing it, but it is my first opportunity. 
 Women lawyers of New York, I bid you welcome to the 
 profession that you have already so well begun to adorn. 
 
 Women have already been at the bar in this State long 
 enough to enable us to see the fulfillment of good things 
 and the promise of better. I happen to know that Mrs. 
 Fannie H. Carpenter has taken important cases through to 
 the Court of Appeals and won victory and fame in doing so. 
 She is a lawyer that is an artist. 
 
 I happen to know something also of the work which the 
 Legal Aid Society has done during the last eight years. 
 Charitable organizations generally I think are apt to do as 
 much harm as good, but the Legal Aid Society is different. 
 It does not dole out charity ; it helps people to assert and 
 maintain their rights. It does not destroy the self-respect 
 of those whom it helps ; it increases it. It has been a most 
 potent force in this community for the righting of wrong 
 and the prevention of oppression. I know of no one better 
 
 2C 
 
deserving the gratitude of this community than Mrs. Rosalie 
 Loew Whitney for the professional work that she has done 
 in connection with the Legal Aid Society. She, too, is a 
 lawyer that is an artist. 
 
 
 
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