ould, by condensing his voice as he
approached it, break a pane of glass in pieces. His learning was
respectable; and with the jury he had great weight; and he was heard
with respect by the court; and always having lived and practised in
sea-ports, he had no inconsiderable knowledge of the law of admiralty.
In the Chesapeake war, old as he was, his spirit fired up. He took
command as brigadier, and longed for another crack at the British. His
descendants still survive, and one of them holds an important federal
office in our modern city. With all the demonstrations of public grief,
his remains were committed to the grave in the south-east angle of the
yard of St. Paul's.

Another leader of the bar was the venerable JAMES NIMMO. His tall form,
neatly attired in black, and bent low as in grateful obeisance to the
rapid years which were bringing him nearer to his heavenly home; that
broad belt of baldness that stretched over from his forehead to his
spine, those silver side-locks that ran wild about his collar, that
honest, peculiar voice, which sounded as if virtue and piety, descending
awhile from the upper sphere, were helping the old man out in his
speech; with the freshness of yesterday I see and hear them all. Though
seemingly attended by celestial visitants, and perhaps for that reason,
he had not a particle of Young America about him. He believed that
rogues and scamps ought to be punished as promptly and as condignly now
as in the days of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and as in the days of
his own early youth; and while he was the aid and comforter of the widow
and the fatherless, and of the virtuous poor,--would weep and pray with
them, and help them out of that slim purse, which never held an unworthy
shilling, he was, as Commonwealth's attorney, the terror of evil-doers.
I remember on one occasion, when he was prosecuting a notorious offender
whom he sent to the penitentiary, and who was defended by Gen. Taylor,
as the old man was bald, and the air of the old court-house was damp, he
threw over his head a red bandanna handkerchief, and I hear the laugh
which Gen. Taylor extorted from the bench, from the jury, and from the
old man himself, by calling it a bloody flag. He was of that substantial
class of lawyers, who, having received an elementary grounding in Latin
and mathematics in the schools of the time, entered the clerk's office,
and served a term of duty within its precincts. He was thus well versed
in