ticing in the same county; but when I went on the bench of the supreme court and selected the county of Morris as one of my circuits, for nine years he practiced there before me, one of the leaders of the bar, engaged in almost every important case; and there were important cases in those days that came before the court. For eleven years afterward it was my duty to take part in reviewing the decisions of the court of chancery and the decrees signed upon his advice; and then for seven years more I had his aid and assistance in this court.

"Whoever met Mr. Pitney during all the time of my knowledge of him was at once impressed with his intense vitality, and was compelled to recognize that he was an independent thinker with strong convictions, expressed earnestly and vigorously. These characteristics were exhibited in his life whether as a citizen or in the business enterprises in which he has engaged or in his profession. The courts before which he praeticed soon discovered that back of his great energy there had been careful preparation; his client's cause had been considered in the minutest detail; the legal theory upon which he deemed it rested had been thought out with care. He marshaled his evidence with prudence and skill and then presented his case to the court and jury with a force and energy that I have never known surpassed. When he went upon this bench he was well equipped for his work; he had an extensive knowledge of equity practice and pleading and a firm grasp of equitable principles. He spared no labor in the investigation of cases presented to him; he investigated every phase. If his earnestness sometimes led to premature expressions, his mature conclusions were independently reached and expressed with judicial candor and honesty, a quality sometimes lacking in the opinions of even great judges. A reviewing court was never left in doubt of his conclusions, or the grounds upon which they were based. I think it would be invidious to attempt to single out any of his opinions on the many interesting questions with which he had to deal. They all exhibit the same characteristics and justify the reputation he attained as a judge.

"I am unwilling to close without a tribute to the personal qualities of Mr. Pitney. It was my good fortune during my service in Morris county to be admitted to the intimacy of his delightful family life. I saw him there surrounded by his numerous sons and daughters, and learned to know the great heart in the body which, by its intense vitality and energy, some

times gave to outsiders a wrong impression of the real man. My admiration then became imbued with an affection that never left

me.

He was a devoted husband, a loving father, and he had the exquisite happiness of seeing his sons following his footsteps and preserving the reputation of his family name. To mourn the loss of such a man is natural, but we are consoled with the idea that his long life was useful to the state, to the courts and to the world."

MR. RICHARD V. LINDABURY said:

"If your Honors please: It has been said that the civilization of any people may be measured by the respect in which it holds its dead. Human nature gravitates toward the earth, and it is only by the contemplation of lofty lives and the formation and pursuit of high ideals that we ever make real or substantial progress, and this, I think, is particularly true of the members of the bar. It is so common and easy in our profession to mistake the wrong for the right, the foolish for the wise to do the thing that seems immediately profitable and miss the larger and ultimate good. How often we are content with a low and short-sighted view of life and duty instead of lifting our eyes to those visions of noble achievement and lasting honor which lie within the horizon of every earnest, determined soul. It is by the study of such lives as those of Bradley, Frelinghuysen, McCarter, Parker and Henry C. Pitney that we come to a realization of the true course which a lawyer should pursue if he would attain to deserved honor or lasting eminence in his profession; and the life of Henry C. Pitney is particularly instructive in this respect.

"He was a man richly endowed by nature, but not more so than many other lawyers who have made no success in their profession at all. Nor was his pre-eminent success due to any accident or to any particular combination of circumstances. It was simply the natural and inevitable result of the course he pursued a course open with few exceptions and fewer limitations to every member of the bar. It is for this reason that his traits of character are worthy of earnest study by every young man at this bar.

"To begin with, he had a strong body; but this was not due to the accident of birth, but to careful, orderly and regular living. He did not waste his strength in either sowing or reaping wild oats, or in any other form of riotous living. By

simple habits and judicious exercise he maintained and increased the strength of body with which nature had endowed him, and but for this he would have fallen far short of the success to which he attained. And the care which he took to develop his bodily strength he likewise bestowed upon his mental faculties. Knowledge did not come to him by mere intuition. His was in the highest sense a trained mind. Study with him did not end with school and college. Through his whole life he was engaged in examining and mastering the weightiest problems, often as it seemed for the mere mental discipline which attended the effort. It was because of this persistent training that he was able as a judge of this court to solve so many difficult questions with quickness and apparent ease. To many this ability seemed marvelous and inborn. It was in fact neither the one nor the other, but the simple result of high training and self-discipline.

"But the success of Vice-Chancellor Pitney was not due alone to his strength of body and mind. Many another man possessed of an equally strong mind in an equally strong body has utterly failed to attain either his own ambition or the respect of his fellow-men, and I am sure that Vice-Chancellor Pitney would also have failed in both these respects had he not possessed that other indispensable requisite to real success-a good conscience. And by this I mean an active, operating conscience, a conscience that dominated and controlled every act of his life. And this, too, with Vice-Chancellor Pitney, was a matter of self-development. Conscience, or the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong, may be developed into an unerring monitor, or, like the muscles of the body, atrophied by disuse and disregard until it fails utterly. No class of men have greater need of this guide than those who follow the profession of the law, and woe to that lawyer who has parted company with it. As well might the mariner attempt to cross the ocean without sextant or compass. How often do we meet lawyers who appear to regard trickery and deception as allowable, and even commendable, in their professional practice, and to whose vision the boundary between truth and falsehood has become utterly obscured. It is needless to say that to such men success is impossible. The practice of the law is based on trust and confidence; and neither the courts nor the public will long confide in a lawyer who is afflicted with moral strabismus.

"Every one of the great lawyers whom I have named was

notable for the high professional standard which he set for himself, and to which he rigidly conformed. Each of them had the confidence of the courts and the public to a marked degree, and that confidence they never abused. And this is particularly true of Henry C. Pitney; for while he was an ardent, enthusiastic advocate, and generally went to the limit of his opportunity in the service of his client, he never sought to gain a point or win a case by treachery or deception of any sort. To him the arts of the demagogue and the pettifogger were alike and always abhorrent. Who shall say that the most valuable legacy which he bequeathed to his family was not his life-long exhibition of a conscience void of offence?

"There were other traits of Vice-Chancellor Pitney's character which may well be studied and emulated by his professional brethren. One was his devotion to the service of his clients. Having undertaken his client's cause he made it his own and never wavered nor paused until the cause was won or the last resource of the law was exhausted. Another, was his thorough preparation of every case entrusted to him. Although his general learning exceeded that of most men, it was his habit to reexamine every question involved in his case and all the authorities which seemed to bear upon it. In this way he became almost as familiar with the English decisions as he was with those of his own state. Lastly, he had abounding courage. This was not merely physical or intellectual, but was born of a good conscience, a highly trained intellect and the close study of his cases. He had a right to trust to conclusions so arrived at if any man ever had, and he did sometimes assert and cling to them against all the world, including the judges of the highest courts of his own state; and it may be that, as in the case of other great and brave lawyers, posterity will yet award to him in not a few of these cases the final verdict. Be that as it may, honest courage is always admirable and winning, and no lawyer ever loses in the estimation of the public or the courts by standing for his real convictions, against whatever odds, to the end.

"Taking it all in all, I know of no more fruitful study for the young and aspiring lawyer than the life of Henry C. Pitney. It has been said that the life of St. Bernard of Clairvaux did more to lift the priesthood and the church out of the low estate into which they had fallen during the two preceding centuries than all other influences combined. Let us hope that the

life of Vice-Chancellor Pitney may in like manner serve to illuminate the ascending pathway of those of his followers who may be lingering or wandering in the marshes at its foot, or who have not yet found their way. And let us also hope that, seeing their way, they may be inspired by his example to follow it, however steep or difficult the ascent, until at last they stand upon the radiant heights where he lived and died, and over which his immortal spirit still hovers."

MR. GILBERT COLLINS said:

"If your Honors please: This is not a time for sadness, though we have been bereft. Mr. Pitney lived to a great age, and met the change that comes to all. He had retired from his judicial labor long enough to make it seem that he was of the past. We can, as we could not on the occasion of the death of one of our brethren in mid-career, think and speak of him dispassionately.

"I knew him just half of his long life, first meeting him as one of my examiners for admission to the bar. There was, I think, something about the old fashion of entrance to our profession that made a link of attachment between each student and his examiners that does not now exist.

Either for this or some

other cause we became very friendly. The man had a talent for friendship, and he had that love for younger men that was so marked in the late Cortlandt Parker and some other leaders of the bar. They looked not askance on their successors, but tried in every possible way to help and strengthen them.

"Many of us remember the days when the court of errors and appeals went into conference immediately after an argument, and the bar withdrew to wait in the ante-rooms. Mr. Pitney was always here; there was scarce a term without causes in which he was of counsel. The waiting bar communed together, and the adepts would instruct the neophytes in the somewhat occult science of the law that rests so largely on tradition; and much that was charming as well as helpful lies in my memory of those Chief among the friendships that as a young man I then gained was Mr. Pitney's. His was an elemental sort of mind; direct, devoid of subtility and without self-consciousness. He was a man who expressed himself as his real thought was, and never failed to impress himself upon any company in which he was, not because he was obtrusive, but because he could not help it. I thought of him in reading an anecdote not long ago about the late Lord Chief-Justice Russell, when merely a practicing

years.