CHARLES O'CONOR.

THIS great lawyer, who for half a century appeared

on one side or the other of nearly every important case tried at the Bar of the metropolis of the United States, was born in that City, where he rose to be one of the most eminent of its many famous jurists, on the 22d day of January, 1804, and died on the 12th of May, 1884, at the ripe age of eighty years.

In his boyhood days he attended school for a term of two months, and, strange as it may seem, that was the extent of his educational privileges. His father, who was a shiftless sort of an antiquated gentleman, his mother having died when he was about eleven, apprenticed him to an acquaintance who was a manufacturer of pitch, tar, turpentine and kindred products of the pine. With this uncongenial man, and his more uncongenial trade, young O'Conor remained a whole year, but in that relatively short time mastered the art, which he never forgot. He told a friend sixty years afterward that he was so familiar with the processes whereby the sap of the pine was converted into its various commercial wares, he could carry on the business without any difficulty.

For the necessarily dirty work which the character of the industry involved, the neglected youth received nothing but his board, the absurdity of which he one day realized and determined to seek some other employment where he could obtain wages.

He must evidently at this time have laid his griev

ances before his ordinarily indifferent father, who now,however, seems to have suddenly awakened to an interest in his son. He placed him with another of his rollicking acquaintances named Stannard, who pretended to practice law. From the record which has come down to this generation, it seems that Mr. Stannard neither had cases to try, nor was his office supplied with any law books, from which young O'Conor could initiate himself into the mysteries of the profession. He managed to get hold of a worn copy of Blackstone, but on attempting to read it, could not understand it at all. He was then only fifteen years old and after going through the work two or three times, was no wiser than before in his knowledge of legal lore.

Two years later he changed preceptors, going to the office of Lemoyne & Thompson. When he arrived at the age of eighteen he again transferred himself to the office of Mr. Joseph Fay, with whom he remained until his admission to the Bar. He was then possessed of just twenty-five dollars, which he judiciously expended in the purchase of a desk, some chairs and paper and a tin sign.

He had devoured Blackstone and every other law book upon which he could get his hands; but law libraries were not as common then as now, the most prominent lawyers possessing only very few books.

The newly-fledged attorney had an office, some cheap furniture, pens and paper, but he did not own a single law book. This was his great trouble; he must have them, but how was he to obtain them without money?

He struggled over this vexed problem of the books day after day, no nearer a solution of the question in view, when on going into the office of the County Clerk one morning, his attention was attracted to a notice posted there of the offer of one hundred and fifty-six volumes of law books, just what he needed, at the ridic

At the sug

ulously low figure of two dollars a volume. gestion of a young friend he took a note for the price of the little library, to a gentleman whom he had often met in the office where he had last read law. It required some nerve to approach the merchant, with whom he had but a very slight acquaintance, he plucked up the courage, however, after deliberating over the matter in his mind for some time. When he made known his request to the gentleman, no reply was vouchsafed to him, and young O'Conor felt not a little chagrined.

At the end of a week judge of his surprise to see the merchant walk into his little office and volunteer to become his endorser to the amount of the value of the library. As soon as he had poured out his thanks to his benefactor, and the latter had retired, off went the happy young advocate to the bookseller, who let him have the books on the security he had brought.

Mr. O'Conor never forgot the kindness of the man who had thus befriended him in the hour of his sorest need. He left to the grand-daughter of his early endorser, a legacy of one-third of his estate, real and personal, after deducting some other small gifts, which must have amounted to a very large sum received by the lady.

The first case that resulted in bringing him prominently to the notice of the public, was that Chancery suit known to the history of the Bar of New York, as Bowen v. Idley. The defendant, a foreigner, married the natural daughter of the plaintiff, whose mother had been a servant in his house. Upon the establishment of the illegitimacy of the defendant's wife, in whom the ownership of certain property rested, Mr. O'Conor asked the Court for a change of guardianship during the trial. The Court, not very readily, acceded to the request, and the son of Chancellor Kent was appointed. Mr. O'Conor managed to ferret out the real mother of the defendant's

wife, a low, coarse woman, and when the case came up for trial was quickly disposed of so far as the illegitimacy of Mrs. Idley was concerned.

The full reports of the celebrated cases in which Mr. O'Conor has appeared make over an hundred volumes. Perhaps the most celebrated in all the annals of American jurisprudence, for many reasons, is the case of Forest v. Forest, which was tried more than a third of a century ago, and which caused a wonderful excitement in New York at the time.

Mr. O'Conor's great characteristic was the sense in which he made the vast amount of legal learning of which he was possessed, clear to the minds of the most illiterate juryman before him. His manner was quiet, almost icy at times, as he poured forth his unanswerable logic in his arguments, and at no period in the trial of the most consummately difficult case did he get "rattled."

It is said that he was very much annoyed because nearly everyone who did not know him or his antecedents, thought him an Irishman, while the fact is, that both his father and grandfather were born in the United States. He was a Catholic in his religious faith, and he said to a friend: "So far from being an advantage, the reputation of being an Irishman and a Catholic has been to me a most serious political, social and professional disadvantage."

Mr. O'Conor enjoyed an immense income from the practice of his profession, but he had some peculiarities in relation to the matter of fees, in which he differed from a majority of lawyers. His charges were always within the domain of moderation, and he rarely demanded of his clients retainers, waiting until he had completed his services, then took all that was due him in one sum. He often labored for years in the trial of causes without receiving a cent of pay until their conclusion.

That Mr. O'Conor had strong political ambitions,