"'Oh for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still!'"
This extract is made not solely to embellish the portrait of Judge Gedney, the man—though I indeed left it unfinished intending thus to invoke Mr. Anthony's aid in completing it—but also to illustrate Mr. Anthony's own cast of mind, character and literary style. Mr. Anthony is by nature and inclination, a scholar and a recluse. If he were rich he would shut up his office and browse in his library; but not selfishly, for no one has been more generous than he in responding to demands for public and literary addresses. I heard him once, before the Chautauqua Assembly, give a purely extemporaneous lecture upon wit and humor which for range of reading, wealth of information, critical analysis and brilliant characterization has never been surpassed by our most famous lecturers; and yet it was delivered with a modesty, sweetness and simplicity which seemed to deprecate the suggestion that it was anything out of the ordinary.
His memory of Judge Gedney unconsciously reveals how deep was the impression made in youth upon a mind singularly susceptible to the charms and graces of literature and upon a nature no less susceptible to the beauties and joys of friendship. As in the case of all such natures, the books must be choice and the friends fit but few. Not, indeed, that Mr. Anthony is deficient in the elements of personal popularity. His election twice to the office of district attorney of the county, the duties of which he most ably discharged, attests his popular strength. But it is undeniable that his predilection for the society of the great and wise of every age, to be found in his well-filled library, has tended more and more to withdraw him from the society of the shallow, the superficial, the frivolous. He stands to-day a lonely but alluring figure, on whose heights those who choose to follow may find in him the charming companion, the accomplished scholar, the earnest inquirer, the inspiring instructor.
Let no captious reader take cynical exception to the note of honest praise sounded in these memoirs. Let it be remembered that, out of hundreds of lawyers, only a few of those entitled to admiration and praise have been selected for extended mention. While personal memoirs should be accurate they need not be exhaustive. In those rare instances in which conspicuous talent has yielded to temptation and, in weakness or dishonor, forfeited public respect, it has seemed to be the truest kindness to pass over it in silence. Indeed, as one surveys the procession down half a century of those who have become notable in the law he is profoundly impressed that not by infirm, invertebrate character have they gained their prominence but only by firm resolution, high endeavor, moral purpose and intellectual power. One is led to wonder not that there should be so few entitled to praise, but that there should be so many. Impartial criticism will demand of the contemporary chronicler not that his praise be stinted, but only that it be discriminating.
Indeed only the most un-stinted, unqualified praise would be either just or appropriate in summoning from that stately procession of great and honored lawyers the lofty, imposing figure of Judge John J. Beattie, who for eighteen years—1889 to 1907—presided over the County Court of Orange County, having been elected for three successive terms. His dignity of presence, weight of character and wealth of learning amply sustained the traditions of a bench once occupied by Gedney and Fullerton. Many of Judge Beattie's decisions have been in cases of far-reaching public importance—notably the case involving the construction of the eight-hour law in which Judge Beattie decided that the provision prohibiting a contractor from allowing his men to work over eight hours a day on a public improvement was unconstitutional and void. The Appellate Division reversed but the Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Beattie in an opinion sustaining every position which Judge Beattie had taken in his opinion.
Judge Beattie is grounded in the principles of the law. In all that he does he is thorough, going to the very bottom of the case whether as to the law or the facts. This quality was strikingly brought out in the case tried by him for eight days before Judge Maddox involving the liability of a railroad company for the damage resulting from the explosion of a locomotive boiler. There was absolutely nothing about a boiler that Judge Beattie did not understand. One would have supposed that he had been brought up in boiler works and had then run an engine on the road. He succeeded in dividing the jury and Judge Maddox said after the trial that he had never seen a finer display of sheer intellectuality than Judge Beattie's management of the defense.
He is an omnivorous reader and his marvelous memory retains all that he ever read. His conversation is an intellectual feast, for he pours out a never-failing stream of literary anecdote, historic incident and choice passages from the classics of every age, all ready to gush forth from his well-stored memory as the conversation glances from one subject to another.
Judge Beattie carries into his retirement from the County Court the gratitude and respect of the bar and of the public for the fine example of judicial dignity and learning which he has given for eighteen years—an example which may well be followed not only by all who succeed him in the County Court, but by all who administer in the same court houses and from the same bench the wider jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Having considered several leaders of the bar who came into practice in the late sixties, but who, like their predecessors, Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton, were never invited to the bench of the Supreme Court, we come now naturally to that group of their early associates who have achieved judicial honors, those honors which have always held a glittering fascination for the bar whether in the wearing or the recounting of them. There never have been enough judgeships to go around and the long tenure now established wholly excludes rotation among the leaders of the bar in respect to judicial position. Hence the prospect that any member of the bar, however able, will ever attain judicial honors is so remote and dependent upon so many unforeseen conditions that when they do descend and repose upon the modest brow of some highly favored but always unenvied brother, the circumstances combining to produce such a fortuitous selection possess all the charm of romance and all the fascination of a fairy tale. While it is true that many unforeseen conditions must always unite in determining the destination of this coveted prize, there still seems to be one inexorable condition to which all Orange County aspirants must conform. They must not reside in the interior of the county. They must practice in the old, historic city of Newburgh—a city which has always taken a deep, honorable, patriotic pride in its Revolutionary associations and in the land they represent, but which has no more pride in, no more sense of connection with, Orange County as a whole than West Point has. Its bar has always been distinguished for great ability and high character.
The Supreme Court of the State of New York, the wide jurisdiction of which extends from Long Island to the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, was never more fortunate than in the acquisition to its bench from the Newburgh bar of the two Browns, father and son—John W. Brown and Charles F. Brown—the elder having ascended the bench in 1850 and the younger in 1883.