The Orange County Bar has contributed to the bar of the State many gifted sons of whom it has been, indeed, proud—Ogden Hoffman, William H. Seward, William Fullerton and others—but it has never contributed one of whose character, ability and fame it is more justly and universally proud than it is of the character, ability and fame of Lewis E. Carr.
Henry Bacon is now, indisputably, the leader of the Orange County Bar. His career has been marked by a singleness of devotion to his profession rarely equaled. It was interrupted at one time by his service for five years in the House of Representatives, in the debates of which he bore an honorable part, impressing himself most favorably upon the leaders of his own party and those of the opposition. But his heart was all the time in the law, which he keenly enjoys as a science and reveres as a master. Returning to Goshen at the expiration of his congressional service he threw himself with renewed ardor into the practice of his profession to which he has since applied himself with undeviating purpose, persistence and power. The position of leadership now held by him is the natural, inevitable and only consistent result of high endeavor and unfaltering purpose united to intellectual gifts and legal qualifications of a superior order. Mr. Bacon has the legal instinct. He is not content until he has penetrated to the heart of the mystery. He revels in a perplexing and complicated case. He loves to unravel its intricacies and explore its mazes.
Mr. Bacon has in the past twenty years tried more cases than any lawyer in the county. He is retained in nearly every important trial. His manifest knowledge of every principle of the law involved in the case always commands the respect of the court and of the bar. In presenting his views to the jury he relies upon logic rather than eloquence, upon consecutive force of argument rather than the arts of persuasion. In the celebrated case of Magar vs. Hammond his opening address to the jury upon the second trial was a masterpiece of clear, coherent, cumulative and convincing statement.
Mr. Bacon is never more interested than when he is confronted with some grave question of constitutional construction. His attack upon the constitutionality of the drainage law, which was declared invalid by the Court of Appeals upon the arguments advanced by him, and in which he was opposed by the eminent advocate John G. Milburn, will be long remembered.
All lawyers are true to their clients, but Mr. Bacon's inflexibility in the assertion or defense of his client's rights is uncompromising to the last degree. It has even been said that, in his zeal and ardor, he is willing to trample upon all the ties of private friendship and all the claims of personal courtesy. But no client was ever heard to complain of this and, after all, the fact remains that no lawyer can serve his clients with absolute fidelity without, at times, wounding his neighbors and his friends. An honest lawyer can know no one but his client and him crucified. His standard of morality and manners, of duty and decorum is expressed in the sentiment, "Stop pursuing my client and I have no further quarrel with you." Mr. Bacon typifies this spirit and embodies this principle in his professional life more strikingly than any lawyer who has ever practiced at the bar of Orange County.
On the other hand Mr. Bacon's social gifts and graces are in the highest degree winning and attractive. One would never suspect, in the velvet palm that greets him at his threshold, the iron hand that crushed him but the day before in court. One would never recognize in the beaming, graceful host the hard-headed lawyer who, with stern, unflinching purpose, will destroy him to-morrow. United in marriage to the brilliant and accomplished daughter of one of America's purest and noblest statesmen, Samuel J. Randall, his home is a center of charming, courtly and gracious hospitality dispensed with lavish, refined and unaffected generosity. Mr. Bacon is the only lawyer in Orange County who has ever both recognized and fulfilled his social duty to his brethren of the bar by throwing open his home to them in receptions intended to bring the judges and the lawyers together in social relations. In olden days and in other counties this custom once prevailed. Possibly it is because Orange County labors under the misfortune of being a half-shire county—a calamity to any bar for the reason, besides many others, that it effectually destroys the possibility of having a suitable court house—that a spirit of comradeship among its lawyers has never grown up. It is noticeable that in counties where the legal interests converge in one central county seat the brotherly spirit is more active. But, however that may be, Mr. Bacon is entitled to the grateful acknowledgment of his efforts to suspend the asperities of professional conflict in the solvent of social converse. In this, as in every other respect, his leadership of the bar is supreme.
Walter C. Anthony preceded Mr. Bacon a few months in their student life with Judge Gedney at Goshen. No one has painted so perfect and beautiful a picture as he of those halcyon days in that country law office. In his memorial tribute he said:
"But of all the delightful hours spent with Judge Gedney I recall, with most pleasure, our afternoon talks at the office. As the day was wearing late and he began to make preparations to leave, he usually seemed to want to draw me into conversation. Frequently it took the form of an examination as to those branches of the law which I was then reading upon. Occasionally he would draw me into the discussion of some legal question, in which he would maintain an opinion opposed to that which I expressed, and in which after combating me, with all his ingenuity and acuteness and frequently discomfiting me, he would in the end explain the whole question and point out the errors of either side of the argument. At times some event of the day's work would be used as a foundation for an explanation of the legal questions involved. In whatever way the conversation was begun his evident purpose was that it should be profitable to me in connection with the studies I was pursuing; and when that end had been accomplished our conversation would wander on 'at its own sweet will,' touching on many and varied themes which all developed new beauties and suggestiveness beneath the light of his varied learning and fertile fancy. Is it to be wondered at that I recall them with a chastened delight? Judge Gedney was then in the very prime of his remarkable powers. His mind was a storehouse of varied and interesting knowledge, and his conversational and descriptive skill were not only very great, but quite unique.
"I shall always regard it as one of the most fortunate circumstances of my life that 1 was brought into such intimate association with David F. Gedney. And as my life passes on into the 'sere and yellow leaf and I sit among the lengthening shadows of its afternoon looking back upon the friends and friendships of my youth, I shall very, very often recall Judge Gedney—the slender, erect figure; the strongly marked face; the scant but expressive gesture; the wonderfully melodious and well modulated voice; the words so deftly chosen from a vocabulary surpassingly rich and full, that they always reminded me of the sentence in holy writ: 'words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in pictures of silver;' and above all I shall recall his kind and generous deeds, the fit exponents of a loving, loyal heart; and, thus recalling him, I shall often in the future exclaim—as I have already in the past—in no empty phrase and with no exaggeration of speech: