this incident to a companion, telling how "the Yankee lawyer beat the British barrister."

During a journey to Washington, Mr. Paine was asked by a New York lawyer on the train, "Who wrote these lines:

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full '?" In reply Mr. Paine related that, when a boy, he was walking one day with his father, when they came in sight of the river Kennebec, and thereupon his father. recited the lines above, and then the entire poem from which he had quoted them, The poem namely, "Cooper's Hill."

was written in 1642 by Sir John Denham, the royalist poet, whose estate at Egham in Surrey had been given by Parliament to the Puritan poet, George Wither, and who, when Wither was captured by the Cavaliers, entreated Charles I. not to hang him, "because so long as Wither lived he, Denham, would not be accounted the worst poet in England." According to the newspaper version of the incident in the train, Mr. Paine, by a supreme effort of his marvellous memory, recited to the New York lawyer the entire poem as he had heard it from his father's lips in their walk together; but of this astonishing feat, Mr. Paine, who related the incident to me several times, never told me; and I think that if he actually recited the poem, he must at some time have read it in print.

Another incident related by one of his legal brethren, in illustration of the tenacity of his memory, is the following: One day in the Superior Court a lawyer said to him, "Can you tell me, Mr. Paine, why it is that the letters S. S. appear in scarlet on the robes of the chief justice of England?" Mr. Paine replied, "I don't know. I never heard any explanation." "I'm sure you must know," persisted his questioner. "Won't you try to recall it?" That afternoon, while going to Cambridge in a horse-car, Mr. Paine had suddenly recalled to his mind some lines of Latin beginning, —

"Sanctus sulpicius . .

This started a chain of recollection which led to the original incident of the native

of Wales who was obliged to recant in the reign of Bloody Mary, and was burned at the stake, the memory of that deed being perpetuated by law by the symbols on the justice's robe. The Latin was not classic, and Mr. Paine was puzzled as to its origin. Finally he remembered that he had read the passage when a student at Harvard, forty years before, in an obscure law book. Going to his law books on his arrival at his home in Cambridge, he found the book and the passage. The fact had been indelibly graven on the tablet of his memory for twoscore years.

Mr. Paine had a ready wit, and many amusing stories are current among his legal brethren, illustrating his quickness and felicity at retort. One of the best examples of this was the noted reply he made to an eminent Massachusetts judge, who had interrupted him, when he was making an argument in court, with a remark which would have thrown a less self-possessed man off his balance, “Mr. Paine, you know that that is not law." "I know it, your Honor," replied the advocate with a deferential bow, "but it was law till your Honor spoke."

A Harvard student, seeing him one day in a Cambridge street car, reading a volume of Massachusetts Reports, said, "Why, Mr. Paine, I am surprised to see that you find it necessary to read law in a horse-car." "I am not reading law," was the reply, "I am reading the decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts."

Being one day saluted by the name of a lawyer whose reputation was badly besmirched, he told the person who had made the blunder who he was. "Pardon me," said the stranger, "I took you for Mr. D." "I excuse you," said Mr. Paine, "but I hope the devil won't make the same mistake."

One of his most felicitous sayings was his indirect but cutting rebuke, of which he told me some years ago, of a millionaire client, who had called one day to consult him. Mr. Paine had just sent his colored servant to a bank with some two hundred dollars or more in banknotes, which the teller of the bank, in paying some railroad coupons, had overpaid. Mr. Paine's client, on hearing him

narrate this incident, exclaimed, "What did you send back the money for? You are a fool. I wouldn't have done it. The banks never rectify mistakes." "Why," quietly replied Mr. Paine, "I happen to labor under a slight misfortune I have to shave myself, and I shouldn't like to look in the glass every morning and see a scoundrel!"

When he was attorney for Kennebec County, Me., a man whom he had indicted for arson was tried and acquitted on the ground that he was an idiot. After the trial, the presiding judge, suspecting that the prosecuting attorney was dissatisfied with the verdict, sought to reconcile him to it by some consolatory remarks. "Oh, I am quite satisfied, your Honor, with the prisoner's acquittal," was the reply; "he has been tried by a jury of his peers."

A peculiarity of Mr. Paine's wit was that it was dry, and seemed almost unconscious. It was uttered quietly and as a matter of course. There was no apparent effort and no chuckle of satisfaction, -only a slight twinkle of the eye, or a faint smile, accompanying the jest.

Mr. Paine used to tell an interesting anecdote of his first sight of Daniel Webster. It was when he (Mr. Paine) was a student in the Harvard Law School. One day Judge Story told his class that Mr. Webster would make an argument in the United States court on the next day, and invited the students to go and hear him. On his way to the court, the judge overtook Mr. Paine, and invited him to ride with him in his carriage. On entering the court-room, the law student saw a man of iron frame and dark complexion, with beetling brows, sitting there, apparently half asleep. The case before the court was "continued," and Mr. Paine, descending from the seat which Judge Story had invited him to take by his side, saw a young attorney go to the man whose physiognomy was so striking, and, handing him a package of papers, say: "Mr. Webster, here is our case, in an account, as kept by double entry." Mr. Webster replied, "Young man, I have never v been able to fathom the mystery and, please God, I n

entry,

From 1849 to 1862, Mr. Paine was a member of the Board of Trustees of Waterville College. In 1851 he was elected member of the Maine Historical Society, and also of the American Academy. In 1854 his Alma Mater conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

In his marriage Mr. Paine was very happy, and often spoke of his good fortune in this respect. In May, 1837, he was united to Miss Lucy E. Coffin, of Newburyport, a lady of rare endowments, both of head and heart, the loss of whom by death robbed him of the supreme solace of his declining years, when ill health had compelled him to withdraw from the absorbing contests of the bar. He left but one child, a daughter, to mourn his departure.

Admirably endowed as was Mr. Paine intellectually and morally, with a professional character "formed in the finest mould of the finest material," he was equally well fitted physically for the practice of his profession. Gifted with an iron frame and nerves of steel, he gave to his calling for half a century his undivided allegiance; and, as during this long time, all his drafts upon his fund of health and energy were promptly honored, it is not strange, perhaps, that he fondly imagined it to be inexhaustible, and took no pains to repair the inroads which an excessive devotion to professional labor had made upon it. In his boyhood and youth he had never shared in the sports of those periods. Ninety-nine boys out of a hundred love to go gunning, and take to the water like ducks; but, though the woods in Winslow abounded in game, he never learned the use of firearms; and though the beautiful Sebasticook River flowed by his father's house into the more beautiful Kennebec, he never learned to sail or to swim. He never rowed a boat, never skated, never played ball, goal, cards, chess, checkers, or any other game. Toiling on year after year, in summer's heat and winter's cold, with no vacation, no recreation, no disposition to follow the wise counsel of Horace to his legal friend Torquatus,

"rebus omissis, Atrea servantem postico falle clientem,"

working double tides, and crowding the labor of a hundred years into fifty, Mr. Paine discovered at last that, big as were his ancestors' deposits of vigor and vitality to his credit, he had overdrawn his account for years, and must now repay the excess with compound interest; in short, that he was physically bankrupt. Some fifteen years before his decease he began to suffer from a catarrh which, baffling every device to cure it, impaired first his hearing, and next his matchless memory, till, finally, for two years, he was unable to recognize his oldest and most intimate friends.

Sad close of a brilliant and honorable career! Had he obeyed the laws of health, Mr. Paine might in all probability have practised his profession, like his brother of the bar, Sydney Bartlett, till he was ninety. The lessons which his life teaches are two, first, that the practice of the law, conscientiously and honorably pursued by one in whose character are blended dignity and courtesy, power and gentleness, and especially when accompanied by the love and cultivation of letters, is sure to win riches and honor, public esteem, and troops of friends; the other lesson is, that the young practitioner, though he riots in health and strength, should not overtax his powers or deny himself stated seasons of rest and recreation. Let him remember that, though suffering does not follow

instantly on the heels of transgression, yet Nature cannot be outraged with impunity. Though a generous giver, she is yet a hard bargainer and a most accurate

HENRY W. PAINE.

book-keeper, whose notice not the tenth part of a cent escapes; and although the items with which she debits him are singly insignificant, and often many long years pass before she presents her bill, yet, added up after half a century, they may show a frightful balance, which can end only in physical and mental bankruptcy.