ple of legal interpretation to
the case of the defendant, and not only found for the plaintiff, but
awarded damages based on the supposed value of the work, including,
if I understand the case aright, the value of the work done by the
young ladies. It would seem, however, that in officially perfecting
the details of his decision he left it a little indefinite as to
what papers the plaintiff was entitled to, it being very difficult
to describe in detail papers many of which he had never seen.
Altogether it may be feared that the decision treated the catalogue
much as the infant was treated by the decision of Solomon.

However this might he, the decision completely denied any right of
the defendant in the work. This feature of it I thought very unjust,
and published in a Utica paper a review of the case in terms not quite
so judicial as I ought to have chosen. I should have thought such a
criticism quite a breach of propriety, and therefore would never have
ventured upon it but for an eminent example then fresh in my mind.

Shortly after the Supreme Court of the United States uttered its
celebrated decision upholding the constitutionality of the Legal
Tender Act, I happened to be conversing at an afternoon reception
with one of the judges, Gray, who had sustained the decision.
Mr. George Bancroft, the historian, stepped up, and quite surprised
me by expressing to the judge in quite vigorous language his strong
dissent from the decision. He soon afterward published a pamphlet
reviewing it adversely. I supposed that what Mr. Bancroft might do
with a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, a humbler
individual might be allowed to do with the decision of a local New
York judge.

The defense appealed the case to a higher court of three judges,
where the finding of the lower court was sustained by a majority
of two to one. It was then carried to the Court of Appeals, the
highest in the State. Here the decision was set aside on what
seemed to me the common sense ground that the court had ignored
the rights of the defendant in the case, who certainly had some,
and it must therefore be remanded for a new trial.

Meantime Peters had died; and it is painful to think that his death
may have been accelerated by the annoyances growing out of the suit.
One morning, in the summer of 1890, he was found dead on the steps of
his little dwelling, having apparently fallen in a fit of apoplexy
or heart failure as he was