my kind regards and a sincere wish that the New Year may bring you improved health to that degree that the ills incident to ripening age, may be easily borne.

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM J. BELLOWS.

HARRY BINGHAM TO WILLIAM J. BELLOWS.

Littleton, April 25, 1900.

Brother Bellows:

I received your New Year's communication and read it with much pleasure. I have been delayed until this late hour from acknowledging your favor, so elegantly given, by the irresistible reluctance that overcomes me whenever I propose to do anything involving mental or physical work. I have all along been flattered by the delusion that tomorrow I can do it better. But you are an old man and I do not need to make excuses; you know how it is yourself.

The good wishes which you express in my behalf I most heartily reciprocate and I hope that the burden of age will continue in the future, as in the past, to rest lightly on your shoulders.

You seem inclined to express what you have to say, in verse, and I congratulate you upon your good fortune in preserving the ability to gratify that inclination. It would be hard to select a better theme for story or song, than the bar of Grafton County as it was

"When first we practised in the courts some fifty years ago."

I think you have done the subject justice, touching as you have briefly the peculiar merit of each.

It seems almost as if the old times were coming again and scenes that have been enacted are about to be re-enacted. You and I, and for that matter, I suppose, all aged people, live in the past rather than the present.

There is little satisfaction in watching and studying the generations now on the stage of action. We see them repeating the

follies of our youth and the mistakes of our maturer years. We are surprised at the credulity and stupidity that repeats what we have tried and know to be utter foolishness, and we are disgusted with the ugliness and false coloring, and the deceptive names that have been substituted instead of the plain natural way in which they were presented in our times.

Humanity repeats itself. Experience is a mighty slow teacher, and the wisdom it teaches generally comes too late.

The present and the events it holds in its bosom, whether of great or small importance, seem like the passing phantoms of a dream and will soon be obliterated from the memory.

Scenes of childhood, while sitting in our mother's lap or sporting in thoughtless joyousness, unthought of for years, now come before the mind's eye in vivid pictures of lifelike reality. The work of our maturer years, the hopes and ambitions in which we once indulged, all lie behind us in a confused mass. The friends that we loved, our associates and our competitors, are mostly in their graves, and the few who remain are like ourselves, tottering over their graves and curious about the great beyond.

Looking back upon our past, I can see nothing more worthy of contemplation than the Grafton County Bar, as it was fifty years ago. There were Wilcox, Quincy, Bellows, Duncan, Blaisdell, Hibbard, Livermore and their associates. They were scholars, lawyers, and gentlemen. There was sport in those days like unto which I can now see nothing.

I have now been prosy and dull long enough probably to tire you all out, and wishing you great peace and happiness, I will close,

Very sincerely yours,

HARRY BINGHAM.

APPRECIATION.

[The following words of appreciation have been contributed for presentation in this volume by men most qualified to discuss the character and abilities of Mr. Bingham, aside from those who were heard at the bar meeting when the eulogies in his honor, elsewhere presented, were delivered. Judge Smith is the only survivor of those who sat upon the Supreme bench when Mr. Bingham was at the zenith of his professional career. Mr. Parker was his political and professional associate for a generation. Mr. Chandler was his leading political antagonist, in and out of the Legislature, and had ample occasion to know and respect his ability and resources. Mr. Samuel C. Eastman was a legislative reporter during the stormy sessions in war and "reconstruction" times, when Mr. Bingham was a central figure on the minority side in the House. Attorney-General Edwin G. Eastman studied law in the "North Country" with the late Judge A. P. Carpenter, who was Mr. Bingham's intimate associate, and also well knows the respect entertained for his great abilities by the profession throughout the state.]

By Hon. Jeremiah Smith, LL. D.

When Harry Bingham died a great and commanding figure passed from the New Hampshire bar. His was a distinct personality, a man strong in brain and strong in body; of positive views, and with a courage which enabled him to stand, if need be, alone.

For many years an acknowledged leader of the bar, he was not a mere lawyer. He believed that a man could not be fit for the highest class of practice if his reading was confined to law books. He once advised a student in his office to drop his law books and make a study of English history, as a necessary preparation for the study of law. Mr. Bingham had a very clear idea of the fundamental propositions of law, which are the starting points for all discussion of specific legal questions. And his powerful and logical mind enabled him to work out sound con

clusions from his premises. His mental processes were not rapid; but they were thorough.

A stranger might sometimes have seen Mr. Bingham engaged in a jury trial without suspecting the latent power of the man. He was always slow, and occasionally heavy and dull. But when he was thoroughly roused a spectator felt that he was witnessing a great man in action. There was in him a total absence of the arts and tricks of a certain class of jury lawyers. He won his cases by main strength; by the sheer force of a powerful intellect, not by stratagem. In this respect he closely resembled the late Daniel M. Christie of Dover. Both were great lawyers, and both were wholly devoid of tact. In the difficult art of crossexamination, Mr. Bingham was not a proficient. He generally lost more than he made. I believe that some of his opponents, who knew his uniform method, used to refrain from bringing out vital testimony on direct examination with the belief that "Harry" would be certain to put the questions on cross-examination, when answers adverse to the cross-examiner would be sure to attract attention. But when Mr. Bingham came to the closing argument, he could deal sledge-hammer blows which indelibly impressed his views upon the jury.

Some of Mr. Bingham's best things in court were said off-hand. He was once arguing against the reliability of a witness named P. W. Hastings. He applied to him all the objurgatory epithets in the English language, and then came to a dead halt because there was nothing left to be said by way of climax. "He is false, he is untrustworthy, he is perjured, he isthen after a long pause he pulled himself together, and added, "After all, gentlemen of the jury, no words describe him better than the words P. W. Hastings." [No italics can express the scorn and contempt with which the name was pronounced.]

No man of his time was capable of making a better argument at the law term. But Mr. Bingham often made the then common mistake of omitting special and careful preparation. Hence he did not come up to the uniformly high level of Alonzo P. Carpenter, who, in his day, was altogether the best arguer of cases at the law term. But when Mr. Bingham put forth all his power he came fully up to the Carpenter standard. Such an

instance was the argument in Clark v. Whitaker, 50 N. H. 476, heard at Haverhill in January, 1871. The amount in dispute was small, but the case raised an important question of commercial law. Mr. Bingham first stated with great exactness the elementary legal proposition involved; and then worked out the logical conclusions from the premises. His argument, which probably did not occupy more than ten minutes, had all the clearness and cogency of a geometrical demonstration.

The most thrilling language I ever listened to from Mr. Bingham was at the conclusion of his argument before the law court in December, 1886, in the great case of Dow v. Northern R. R., 67 N. H. 1. The types can here reproduce only the words, but not the vehement personality of the speaker. No one who heard them uttered can have forgotten the effect produced.

The counsel for the defence had made what Mr. Bingham regarded as an unwarrantable attack upon his client, Mr. Dow. At the close of the argument Mr. Bingham referred to this attack, and said (I quote from memory): "There was a great battle before the Legislature as to the enactment of the statute now under consideration. My client, Captain Dow, made a strong fight against it, but a powerful combination carried it through. Captain Dow is present here today in this court room, a reputable citizen of New Hampshire. But I ask you where is now the man who was the head and front of the combination which prevailed upon the Legislature to enact the statute? Where is ? (giving the name in full).

A fugitive from justice, an exile in foreign lands."

From an early day, Harry Bingham was universally styled "Judge Bingham." Distinguished as he was at the bar, it was probably the general feeling in the profession that the more appropriate place for him was the bench. Had he gone upon the bench, he would, in those times, have been compelled to sit at trial terms as well as at law terms. As a trial judge I never thought that he would have been the equal of his brother George, a man of quicker perceptions and greater practical sagacity. But at the law term, in important cases, he would sometimes have delivered opinions worthy to be put in the same class with those of Richardson, Parker, Perley, Doe and Carpenter. He