Soon after Mr. Decker's admission to the bar in 1870 he formed a partnership, under the name of McQuoid & Decker, with Henry M. McQuoid, who died a few years later. Mr. McQuoid's portrait hangs in Mr. Decker's office, but there is little else to remind us now of one who once occupied a large place in the interest and attention of the public. Mr. McQuoid was distinguished for bold, dashing, sparkling qualities as a trial lawyer. Soon after Judge Groo moved from Monticello to Middletown in 1866 he and Mr. McQuoid were opposed to each other in a trial in which Mr. McQuoid disputed all of Judge Groo's legal propositions with the prefatory remark, "That may be good law in Sullivan County but it won't go in Orange County." After Judge Groo had stood this as long as he thought he ought to, he remarked, "I want you to understand that there are just as good lawyers in Sullivan County as in Orange County." "Oh, yes," said McQuoid, "I know that, but they all stay there."
Judge Groo himself enjoyed the sally and was himself very quick at a retort. Once upon a trial in Goshen in which he was opposed by Judge George W. Greene, who at one time occupied a prominent place at the Orange County bar, subsequently living in New York, where he died, Judge Greene asked the jurors the usual question, whether any of them had ever done any business with Judge Groo, saying that if so he would excuse them, whereupon Judge Groo said. "Are there any gentlemen in the box who have ever done any business with Judge Greene; if so I would like to have them remain."
Mr. McQuoid had a wonderful memory. He could entertain his friends by the hour repeating passages from famous orations or works of poetry. His memory treasured even a fugitive poem read once in a newspaper. I recall an instance of this. One day when I was driving back with him in a buggy from Circleville, where we had tried a case against each other it was the local custom for the lawyers to drive out together for their justice's court trials, he repeated to me a poem he had seen in a newspaper written by Prime, the well known Eastern traveler, in memory of a young girl, Claude Brownrigg, who had died soon after he had told her of his travels in Palestine, as they walked the beach one night in the moonlight. I told Mr. McQuoid I would like a copy of it. So as soon as he got back to Middletown he wrote it off for me. I have preserved it these thirty years and more. Here are some of the lines:
"All this I wished as on the beach
Beside the sea I walked,
And to a young and white-robed girl,
As thus I wished I talked.
Talked of far travel, wanderings long,
And scenes in many lands,
And all the while the golden path
Led eastward from the sands.
"And she has crossed the shining path,
The path where moonbeams quiver,
And she is in Jerusalem,
Forever, yes, forever."
That lines like these should be repeated by him in coming back from a commonplace suit in justice's court shows how thirty-five years ago lawyers thought and talked of something besides law and politics, money and stock markets.
The name of the McQuoids should not be permitted to fade from the memory of the passing generation. His brother, Charles C. McQuoid, who died in 1866, attained even greater prominence at the bar. He enjoyed great personal popularity and his premature death at the age of thirty-six from typhoid fever, contracted at the home of a client, whose will he had been asked to draw, removed from the bar one of its most conspicuous figures. His popularity is shown by his success in defeating judge Gedney for district attorney by a narrow majority in 1859. He served as district attorney until 1862. Being succeeded by Abram S. Cassedy, who in 1865 was succeeded by J. Hallock Drake, another brilliant member of the Orange County bar who practiced in Newburgh for some years but who subsequently settled in New York.
Charles G. Dill, now the Nestor of the Middletown bar, studied law with Charles C. McQuoid, whose memory he holds in deep veneration. Mr. Dill at one time enjoyed the largest practice in Middletown. It is only lately that he has relaxed his devotion to business, now spending several months each year in Florida, where he has extensive interests.
Mr. Dill is the very soul of honor and integrity in all the relations of life. The kindness of his heart is often obscured by the brusqueness of his manner which sometimes gives strangers a wholly erroneous impression of a disposition singularly generous, open and buoyant. He is the precise opposite of the type represented by the traditional cow that gives a good pail of milk and then kicks it over. Mr. Dill kicks over the pail first and then proceeds to fill it with the milk of human kindness. He generally explains at the beginning how impossible it is for him to do anything for you and ends by doing more for you than you asked or expected.
Mr. Dill's miscellaneous library is the best in Orange County. He is a born, inveterate, irreclaimable bibliophile. A week that passes by without his buying some old, rare or scarce volume is to him a failure. The question of price is never considered. If he wants it he gets it and that is all there is of it. He has built several additions to his home to accommodate his treasures, but they constantly overtax its capacity. They overflow and regurgitate in a confusion that drives to despair the order fiend and the dust hunter.