"The New York Central cases would hardly be closed before he might find it necessary to plunge into the hearings in the long controversy between Lord Dunraven and the New York Yacht Club over the famous international yacht race between ‘Defender' and ‘Valkyrie III,' in which the action of the yacht club had been criticised by the English challenger, and these hearings would perhaps be followed by the trial of the extraordinary case of Laidlaw v. Russell Sage, arising out of the dynamiting of Russell Sage and his alleged attempt to use the plaintiff as a shield, and presenting novel questions in the law of assault and trespass. Incidentally, it may be noted that this was the only case in which Mr. Choate was ever known to over-cross-examine-a common professional fault. His indignation had been so excited by the circumstances of the case that his cross-examination actually turned inside out the 'vest' and other personal garments of the defendant, the original history and condition of which the crossexamination fully exposed to the public gaze. In the years between 1880 and 1895 he was frequently employed in successful pioneer work in so-called Elevated Railroad cases, which were actions at law, condemnation proceedings, and suits in equity, brought to recover heavy damages arising out of the construction of the New York system of elevated railroads through and over the public streets, and which involved wholly novel questions in the law of easements relating to the rights of abutting owners to light, air, and access-cases in which Mr. Evarts and Mr. Choate were at times both engaged, and in which frequently arose the most difficult conceivable questions of title, including the title to old Dutch streets as affected by the civil law. At the same time, he was occupied for years with the defense of the Standard Oil Companies and the so-called Standard Oil Trust, in the famous 'Anti-trust Law' suits, including the cases attacking the Texas and Ohio Anti-trust Laws, and other cases covering the usual difficult, but at that time quite novel, Anti-trust Law questions, and in cases involving the valuation of oil properties, alleged breaches of warranty, building contracts, and many other matters, with constant legislative and congressional investigations. All this work was varied by great will contests, long drawn out, and great will construction suits, in the surrogates' or probate courts and through the medium of equity and partition suits, involving the Cruger, Vanderbilt, A. T. Stewart, Samuel J. Tilden, Hoyt, Drake, Hopkins-Searles, Vassar, Vanderpoel, and almost innumerable other wills which came before him year by year, presenting extremely important and embarrassing questions in the law relating to testamentary instruments and trusts and their construction, and covering all phases of insanity issues and the law of undue influence and testamentary capacity. This class of litigation included jury trials and the most carefully prepared cases on appeal in the higher courts. Landlord and tenant cases, arising, perhaps, in the form of ejectment suits for one of the Astor estates, would be followed by the important case against the Canada Southern Railway, testing before the Supreme Court of the United States the rights of domestic purchasers and holders of foreign-railway-company bonds, or the Brooklyn Bridge case, before the same court, involving the right to build and maintain the great and necessary structures connecting New York and Brooklyn, or the Stanford University case, from California, also before the Supreme Court, in which the United States sought to recover many millions from the Leland Stanford estate, the success of which suit would have deprived the University of a large part of its endowment, and in which case Mr. Choate's successful appeal for the University resembled Webster's appeal for Dartmouth College; and this, in turn, might be succeeded by the Bell Telephone Case, involving the entire Bell telephone patent. His work before the Supreme Court of the United States in all these years was continuous. The Behring Sea Case before that court, in which he appeared for the Canadian

government, and which involved the right of the United States to seize and condemn Canadian and other vessels in Behring Sea, was matched in importance by the New York Indians Case, which had to do with the Indians' right to lands on their summary removal to limited reservations in other parts of the country; and these cases would no sooner be finished than he would be called into the case of the Pullman Palace Car Company against the Central Transportation Company, involving a great contract of lease, or the Southern Pacific Land Grant Case, the Chinese Exclusion Cases, the Alcohol-in-the-Arts Case, involving rebates of millions of dollars under the tariff laws, or the Massachusetts Fisheries Case (Manchester v. Massachusetts), relating to the state's right to protect fisheries in arms of the sea within or beyond the 3-mile limit. He would hardly have finished such a long series of cases before the Supreme Court before he would be called into an admiralty collision suit for the White Star Line, developing novel and abstruse problems in hydraulics and suction-action, in the case of overtaking ships of varying tonnage and draught, or suits presenting equally novel and complicated bill of lading problems arising out of the fire on the Inman Line pier and the destruction of the cargo of the steamship Egypt of the old National Line. While these cases were under way, he would, perhaps, be consulting with Mr. Evarts over the trial and argument of cases involving the whole common law of covenants and conditions subsequent as applied to deeds of property abutting on portions of the old Bloomingdale Road, as affected, in turn, by New York's great Riverside Park Improvement, or would be preparing to argue before the Supreme Court of the United States or elsewhere the great constitutional questions in the Income Tax Cases, the Reciprocal and Retaliatory Taxation Cases against insurance companies, the Kansas Prohibition Law Cases, the California Irrigation Law Cases, and the Neagle Case, this last involving the assault by Judge Terry, of California, on Mr. Justice Field, which raised the whole question of the power of the Supreme Court to protect itself and its officers within the jurisdiction of a state; or, after arguing in Washington the constitutionality of the Federal and state inheritance taxes, we might find him called in to his triumphant and spirited vindication of the rights of the bar, as against aggressions of the bench, in the contempt proceedings instituted by Recorder Smythe of New York, against Mr. Goff (afterwards recorder, and now Mr. Justice Goff, of the New York Supreme Court)—a peculiarly satisfactory and successful experience for Mr. Choate, in which he made one of his most forceful, eloquent, and convincing appeals to judicial as well as to human nature. While advising with Mr. Evarts as to the replevin action by the Turkish government, for which they were acting, to recover a consignment of rifles, he might find himself in the midst of the preparation for the trial of the greatest action for deceit (in the form of a suit in equity for an accounting) ever brought in New York-the controversy between the Banque-Franco-Egyptienne, of Paris, and various leading New York bankers over the sale of the old New York, Boston & Montreal bonds—or might be considering with his other partner, Mr. Southmayd, the firm's opinion as to a railroad reorganization plan. One week would find him occupied in the New York court of appeals with the so-called Maynard Election Fraud Cases and the cases involving the inheritance taxes under the Vassar will, with other questions affecting Vassar College, and the next week would see him before the Interstate Commerce Commission, representing the Orange County Farmers of New York, in a long and successful controversy with all the railroads centring in New York and Jersey City over the freight rates on New York city's milk supply. The very next week, in turn, he would himself represent the same railroads, or some

of them, before that Commission or before a congressional or legislative committee, on a question of rates, of regulation, or of taxation. While he was settling the membership law for clubs and exchanges in what was practically the pioneer American litigation on that subject, in the famous cases of Loubat v. Union Club and Hutchinson v. New York Stock Exchange, he was also settling important features of the law of arbitration in a great building contract case. After a prodigious winter's work in will contests, and various important arguments before the court of appeals in New York and the Supreme Court at Washington, he devoted the entire summer and fall of the year 1894 to the work of the New York Constitutional Convention, of which he was President, and whose proposed constitution, due chiefly to his personal advocacy, was fully and triumphantly adopted by the people of the state, and is still in existence and serviceable. From that work his normal activities would drive him, perhaps, into an intricate partnership accounting with the estate of Paran Stevens, over a complicated hotel business, or into a long trial of a jury case, in which he appeared on behalf of the Western Union Telegraph Company and Jay Gould, involving questions of contract and tort in its relations with the old Bankers & Merchants Company and other telegraph companies—one of the trials in these cases furnishing us with the only instance (due in part to extraordinary heat in the month of June) in which Mr. Choate's voice was ever known to weaken through huskiness. Following these, he was liable at any time to be drawn into the accountings of the executors and trustees under the Astor and various other wills, or to be called upon to advise in relation to the last professional service of Mr. Evarts, rendered to the High Court of Chancery of England in its capacity as guardian of infants. For many years he found himself employed before the court of claims or special commissions, or before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Berdan Arms Case and other difficult cases, and in the claims arising out of the Alabama Awards, and, later, in the Spanish Treaty Claims, followed by many extraordinary drawback and other revenue cases, some of which went to the Supreme Court. And, to cap the climax, he was occasionally, as we have heretofore pointed out, called into great patent cases; for example, that involving the whole Bell telephone patent. As evidence of his complete mastery of the problems of intensively specialized modern business law, reference may be made to his successful handling, following his return from the English ambassadorship, of the various controversies arising out of the receivership and proposed readjustment and reorganization of the affairs of the Third Avenue Railway Company of New York."

CHAPTER VIII

IN ENGLAND AS AMBASSADOR

FAREWELLS IN NEW YORK-ARRIVAL IN LONDON-NO. I CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE-PRESENTED TO THE QUEEN-FIRST SPEECH AS AMBASSADOR-SOCIAL DUTIES LITERARY FUND AND ACTORS' FUND DINNERS-SUTHERLAND INSTITUTE-ANGLO-SAXONS-SIR WALTER SCOTT CLUB-TO WINDSOR TO MEET THE KAISER-COOMBE ABBEYSICKNESS IN THE FAMILY-BOER WAR-VISITORS-LORD RAYLEIGH -WAR NEWS-A BUST OF WASHINGTON-THE LOCKER-LAMPSONS -SAMOAN TREATY-THE AUTHORS' CLUB-LADYSMITH-PRESENTATIONS HOLIDAY AT CANNES-LL.D. FROM EDINBURGH-HOWICKTHE FRANKLIN PORTRAIT-A VISIT TO THE GUILDHALL-DINNERSA DRAWING-ROOM-THE FISHMONGERS' DINNER-SIR HENRY IRVING -THE LEYS SCHOOL-FOURTH OF JULY AT THE EMBASSY-A LETTER TO JUDGE CHOATE-LONDON IN AUGUST-BOXER REBELLION-HOLIDAY IN ITALY-THE ADDRESS ON LINCOLN-MCKINLEY RE-ELECTED -GEORGE DOWNING-ADDRESS AT EDINBURGH-DALMENY HOUSESTOVES-DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA—A WREATH FROM THE PRESIDENT A VISIT TO GEORGE MEREDITH-ENTERTAINMENTS AND DISCOURSES BLYTHSWOOD AND SOME MISCHANCES-MRS. RITCHIE -DEATH OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY-THE PANAMA CANAL-HOME FOR A HOLIDAY-BILTMORE-FIRST DRAWING-ROOM OF THE NEW REIGN CORONATION TROUBLES A BIG RECEPTION AT THE EMBASSY -TO GREECE AND ENGLAND DECLINES A RETAINER-A LECTURE ON THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT-HOME FOR HIS SON'S WEDDING-ALASKA BOUNDARY CASE-bible SOCIETY CENTENARY— TO EDINBURGH TO TALK OF HAMILTON-A PLEA FOR MR. LODGEPREPARATIONS TO RESIGN-A VISIT TO THE KING AND QUEENTHE JOHN HARVARD WINDOW-A BANQUET BY THE BENCH AND BAR -THE LORD MAYOR'S FAREWELL BANQUET-THE WINDOW AT ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH-SAILS FOR HOME

Mr. Choate, his wife, and daughter sailed on the St. Paul for Southampton on February 22, 1899. The night before he sailed he went to a great dinner of the Harvard Club at the Waldorf-Astoria, where he was the leading guest of the evening and was cheered and drunk to and

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sung to to the full extent of Harvard energies. "Last night," he said, "I talked to a great company of lawyers, whose first feeling was how glad they were that I was going. (Laughter.) I speak to-night to a great company of Harvard men, whose last thought, I hope, is how sorry we are." (Prolonged cheering.)

Mr. Choate's good-bys were a serious matter, or would have been to anybody but him. Besides the lawyers he spoke of, the Union League Club gave him a farewell dinner. He went early to the pier and went aboard to receive his friends. Fifty lawyers came to see him off, The Evening Telegram said. At all events he got away very cheerfully.

He got to Southampton on the 1st of March, was met by the Mayor and a deputation partly British and partly American from the Embassy, received an illuminated address from the Southampton Chamber of Commerce and made his first speech as Ambassador. In London he put up at Claridge's. The next matter was a house. He could not get the house that his predecessor, Mr. Hay, had had, but with Mrs. Choate's complicity and assistance he presently acquired Lord Curzon's house, No. 1 Carlton House Terrace, which Levi Leiter, of Chicago, had given to his daughter Mary when she became Lady Curzon. It was a first-rate house for an Ambassador, in the same row with the house, No. 5, that Ambassador Hay had had. On the 6th of March he went to Windsor with Mrs. Choate and was presented to the Queen, for that year was still the nineteenth century and belonged to the Victorian age. His first considerable speech was at the dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom. Of this discourse a London commentator said: