in the office was that neither he nor his partners
should ever accept a case if their client were in the wrong, or
guilty. But this very fact made wrongdoers the more anxious to secure
him, knowing it would create the impression at once that they were
innocent.

A story which went the rounds of legal circles in Boston and finally
was published in the "Boston Sunday Times," shows how he was cleverly
fooled by a pick-pocket The man charged with the crime came to Colonel
Conwell to get him to take the case. So well did he play the part of
injured innocence that Colonel Conwell was completely deceived and
threw himself heart and soul into the work of clearing him. When the
case came up for trial, the lawyer and client sat near together in the
court room, and Colonel Conwell made such an earnest and forceful plea
in behalf of the innocent young man and the harm already done him by
having such a charge laid at his door that it was at once agreed the
case should be dismissed, by the District Attorney's consent. So
lawyer and client walked out of court together, happy and triumphant,
to Colonel Conwell's office, where the pick-pocket paid Colonel
Conwell his fee out of the lawyer's own pocketbook which he had deftly
abstracted during the course of the trial.

The incident caused much amusement at the time, and it was a long
while before Colonel Conwell heard the last of it.

Into work for temperance he went heart and soul, not only in speech
but in deed. Though he never drank intoxicating liquor himself, he
could never see a man under its baneful influence but that heart and
hand went out to help him. Many a reeling drunkard he took to his
Somerville home, nursed all night, and in the morning endeavored with
all his eloquence to awaken in him a desire to live a different life.
Deserted wives and children of drunkards came to him for aid, and many
of the free law cases were for those wronged through the curse of
drink.

Friend always of the workingman, he was persistently urged by their
party to accept a nomination for Congress. But he as persistently
refused. But he worked hard in politics for others. He managed one
campaign in which General Nathaniel P. Banks was running on an
independent ticket, and elected him by a large majority. His name
was urged by Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson for the United
States Consulship at Naples, the lectures he had given at Cambridge,
England, on Italian history having attracted