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Show REMINISCENCES OF CARPENTER AND CHOATE. "Kankakes, a correspondent of the New York Sun relates the following incidents; <br><br> Mr. Carpenter studied law with Rufus Choate, and revered his memory with filial devotion. Choate loved him greatly and predicted for him a career not less brilliant than his own. When the young student graduated from his office he drew up for him a great list of costly books which he said he would need in his Western practice. Carpenter could have bought the State of Massachusetts just as readily as he could have bought that list. But Choate astonished him still more when he said, "You will draw on my purse for these books, and for all your other wants, until you are established. Take all you need; it does my heart good to give it to you." He would take no notes or other evidences of Carpenter's indebtedness. The money was scrupulously repaid to the last cent, but with some difficulty, for Choate would forget, or pretend to forget, and generously denied important items in the account. <br><br> Like Carpenter, Choate was perfectly content as long as he had anything at his banker's; but a notice from that grim personage that his account was overdrawn would throw him into the most unreasonable agitation, although thousands might be due him from clients perfectly able and willing to pay. The writer recollects vividly a characteristic anecdote of Choate, characteristically told by Carpenter. Carpenter went to Choate at his house on some business of the office and found him alone in his library in the second story. He lay on a lounge chatting freely of everything but the matter his student had come about, and managed to put that by whenever it was approached. At length he said. "Open that sideboard, my boy, and take out the decanter and glasses you find there, and we'll comfort ourselves with a drink." But no sooner had Carpenter obeyed these directions than a footstep was heard on the stairway, furtive, timid, but steadily approaching. Choate listened an instant, with a merry glitter in his eye, and then cried: "Hustle there! Hustle them in! Methinks it hath a Presbyterian sound." But the intruder turned out to be an Episcopalian clergyman; the decanter reappeared, and Carpenter left without being able to even mention the business upon which he had gone. |
