THE
New Jersey Law Journal
PUBLISHED MONTHLY
VOLUME XLV FEBRUARY, 1922 No. 2
SOME REMINISCENCES, MOSTLY LEGAL
BY HON. FREDERIC ADAMS, LOS ANGELES, CAL.
IV. Certain Courts and Lawyers.
Ever since my boyhood the drama of the courtroom has interested me morethan the drama of the theatre. I well remember my introduction tolitigated business. I was a youngster on a visit to Boston when some onetook me to a Court where a patent case was on trial. I was dulyimpressed by the imposing personality of the Judge, but my attention wassoon fixed by the witness on the stand, whom I happened to know, for myfather had once introduced me to him. He was Professor James Jay Mapes,of Newark, New Jersey, a chemist and inventor, one of whose manyactivities was the manufacture of fertilizers. I had visited one of hisfactories, somewhere between Newark and Elizabeth, and was surprised tosee him at Boston in the rôle of a mechanical expert in a patent case.As the examination carefully proceeded I concluded, with the rashness ofinexperience, that the examiner was a very dull man, for he seemed soslow to get an idea. What I then mistook for dullness I now recognize asprofessional skill, employed by counsel to unfold to the Court and jurythe details of a complex mechanism. I know now more about that case thanI did then, for, rather to my surprise, I have recently found a reportof it in the first volume of Fisher's "Patent Cases," at page 108. Thetime was August, 1851, when I was not quite eleven years old. Thecourtroom was that of the Circuit Court of the United States for theFirst Circuit. Samuel Colt was plaintiff. The Massachusetts Arms Companywas defendant. The counsel for the plaintiff were E. N. Dickerson, C. L.Woodbury and G. T. Curtis, and for the defendant R. A. Chapman, G.Ashmun and Rufus Choate, and the Judge was Mr. Justice Levi Woodbury ofthe Supreme Court of the United States, who was then testing thevalidity of the patent for the Colt revolver. The charge is reported infull. The verdict was for the plaintiff.
Judge Woodbury was a New Hampshire man of some note, then in hissixty-second year, called by Thomas H. Benton "the rock of the NewEngland Democracy," who had been Senator of the United States from NewHampshire, and a member of the Cabinets of Jackson and Van Buren, and,on the nomination of President Polk, had succeeded Judge Story as amember of the Supreme Court of the United States. The trial of the casein which I saw him was one of his last official duties, for he died inthe following month. He was succeeded by Benjamin R. Curtis, of Boston,on the nomination of President Fillmore.
[pg 34]While I was at the Harvard Law School in 1863-4, Richard H. Dana wasUnited States District Attorney at Boston, and I often saw him atCambridge, where he lived. His book, "Two Years Before the Mast," wasand is a favorite of mine. I suppose that I have read it twenty times,and I hope that the boys of this day read and love it. It is in a classby itself. There is, I think, not in English, and probably not in anylanguage, another account of seafaring life written in the forecastle byone of the crew, who was also a gentleman and a scholar and master of acharming style. The veracity and spirit of the narrative have made it aclassic both here and in England. In California it is particularlyvalued, for Dana was one of the pioneers and had sailed through theGolden Gate on the "Alert" in the winter of 1835-6, many years beforethe Mexican War and the discovery of gold, when San Francisco as yet wasnot. When, at the end of the visit, the