My Memories of Eighty Years [5]
Another unincorporated and yet valuable school was the frequent sessions at the drug store of the elder statesmen of the village. On certain evenings these men, representing most of the activities of the village, would avail themselves of the hospitable chairs about the stove and discuss not only local matters but the general conditions of the country, some of them revolving about the constitutionality of various measures which had been proposed and enacted into laws. They nearly all related to slavery, the compromise measures, the introduction of slaves into new territories, the fugitive slave law, and were discussed with much intelligence and information. The boys heard them talked about in their homes and were eager listeners on the outskirts of this village congress. Such institutions are not possible except in the universal acquaintance, fellowship, and confidences of village and country life. They were the most important factors in forming that public opinion, especially among the young, which supported Mr. Lincoln in his successful efforts to save the Union at whatever cost.
A few days after returning home from Yale I entered the office of Edward Wells, a lawyer of the village, as a student. Mr. Wells had attained high rank in his profession, was a profound student of the law, and had a number of young men, fitting them for the bar under his direction.
I was admitted to the bar in 1858, and immediately opened an office in the village. My first client was a prosperous farmer who wanted an opinion on a rather complicated question. I prepared the case with great care. He asked me what my fee was, and I told him five dollars. He said: "A dollar and seventy-five is enough for a young lawyer like you." Subsequently he submitted the case to one of the most eminent lawyers in New York, who came to the same conclusion and charged him five hundred dollars. On account of this gentleman's national reputation the farmer thought that fee was very reasonable. In subsequent years I have received several very large retainers, but none of them gave so much satisfaction as that dollar and seventy-five cents, which I had actually earned after having been so long dependent on my father.
After some years of private practice Commodore Vanderbilt sent for me and offered the attorneyship for the New York and Harlem Railroad. I had just been nominated and confirmed United States minister to Japan. The appointment was a complete surprise to me, as I was not an applicant for any federal position. The salary was seven thousand five hundred dollars and an outfit of nine thousand. The commodore's offer of the attorneyship for the Harlem Railroad, which was his first venture in railroading, was far less than the salary as minister. When I said this to the commodore, he remarked: "Railroads are the career for a young man; there is nothing in politics. Don't be a damned fool." That decided me, and on the 1st of January, 1921, I rounded out fifty-five years in the railway service of this corporation and its allied lines.
Nothing has impressed me more than little things, and apparently immaterial ones, which have influenced the careers of many people. My father and his brothers, all active business men, were also deeply interested in politics, not on the practical side but in policies and governmental measures. They were uncompromising Democrats of the most conservative type; they believed that interference with slavery of any kind imperilled the union of the States, and that the union of the States was the sole salvation of the perpetuity of the republic and its liberties. I went to Yale saturated with these ideas. Yale was a favorite college for Southern people. There was a large element from the slaveholding States among the students. It was so considerable that these Southerners withdrew from the great debating societies of the college and formed a society of their own, which they called the Calliopean. Outside of these Southerners there were very few Democrats among the students, and I came very near being