n were
marvellously well mated. Smith was an old-fashioned attorney of the
Websterian sort, dignified, ponderous, and impressive. By 1878, when he
came in to defend the little Bell Company against the towering Western
Union, Smith had become the most noted patent lawyer in Boston. He was a
large, thick-set man, a reminder of Benjamin Franklin, with clean-shaven
face, long hair curling at the ends, frock coat, high collar, and beaver
hat.

Storrow, on the contrary, was a small man, quiet in manner,
conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information.
He was so thorough that, when he became a Bell lawyer, he first spent
an entire summer at his country home in Petersham, studying the laws
of physics and electricity. He was never in the slightest degree
spectacular. Once only, during the eleven years of litigation, did
he lose control of his temper. He was attacking the credibility of a
witness whom he had put on the stand, but who had been tampered with by
the opposition lawyers. "But this man is your own witness," protested
the lawyers. "Yes," shouted the usually soft-speaking Storrow; "he WAS
my witness, but now he is YOUR LIAR."

The efficiency of these two men was greatly increased by a third--Thomas
D. Lockwood, who was chosen by Vail in 1879 to establish a Patent
Department. Two years before, Lockwood had heard Bell lecture in
Chickering Hall, New York, and was a "doubting Thomas." But a closer
study of the telephone transformed him into an enthusiast. Having a
memory like a filing system, and a knack for invention, Lockwood was
well fitted to create such a department. He was a man born for the
place. And he has seen the number of electrical patents grow from a few
hundred in 1878 to eighty thousand in 1910.

These three men were the defenders of the Bell patents. As Vail built up
the young telephone business, they held it from being torn to shreds
in an orgy of speculative competition. Smith prepared the comprehensive
plan of defence. By his sagacity and experience he was enabled to
mark out the general principles upon which Bell had a right to stand.
Usually, he closed the case, and he was immensely effective as he would
declaim, in his deep voice: "I submit, Your Honor, that the literature
of the world does not afford a passage which states how the human voice
can be electrically transmitted, previous to the patent of Mr. Bell."
His death, like his life, was dramatic. He was on his feet in t