sh governments, and
contributed not a little to bringing about the agreement which resulted
in the Treaty of Washington.

During this long public career, Judge Nelson retained his home in
Cooperstown, where he was in residence much of the time. In that day the
drift of successful men to the cities had not yet become a law of
growth, and many a big man dwelt by choice in a small community. So it
was with Judge Nelson, who, on retiring from the highest tribunal of the
nation, could imagine nothing more grateful than to spend all his time
in the village from which the pressure of judicial duty had kept him too
much away.

[Illustration: SAMUEL NELSON, LL.D.]

Judge Nelson first became widely known in 1837, when he was appointed
chief justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The court
was then composed of three judges, whose principal duty it was to hear
and decide questions of law. It was a judicial body of great dignity and
learning, with a fame so illustrious that its decisions had long been
cited as authority in Westminster Hall, and in all the States of the
Union where the common law prevailed.

In the Supreme Court of the United States, when he was promoted to that
tribunal, and in the United States Circuit Courts, Judge Nelson was
called upon to administer branches of law with which he was not in
practice familiar, and some fears were expressed that these untried
duties might cause him embarrassment. It was suggested that his long and
severely critical administration of the common law, through its
pleadings and practice, might have so educated him that he would fail in
appreciating the more liberal and expansive systems of Equity, Maritime,
Admiralty, and international jurisprudence administered in the national
courts; and it was also thought improbable that a judge who had been
early in professional life elevated to the bench of a common law court,
would be able to explore and understand the complicated mechanical,
chemical, and other scientific questions, which in Patent causes were
constantly arising for exclusive adjudication in the federal courts.

But these apprehensions were all disappointed. Judge Nelson had no
sooner taken his seat on the bench of the Circuit Court in New York
City,[115] than he perceived that the cases on the calendar, though few
in number, were so complicated, and embraced so many intricate
questions, that they must be mastered according to a method that his
former expe