The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

812 APPENDIX.
tutors, Messrs. Fessenden & DebAlis, was the astute Longfellow, the
learned IIopkins, the sagacious Greenleaf, the facetious, yet thoughtful
and dignified Emery, the courtly Kinsman, and the benevolent Adams.
The records of the courts in that cotunty bear testimony, that our stripling minor stood in the midst of those professional Goliaths without
suffering any retrograde in his reputation as a student or an advocate,
but, with a constantly increasing practice, approximating that of the
largest among them, up to the period when he yielded to the engrossments of politics.
I learn, that at that early day. he entertained an exalted idea of the
vigorous growth that awaited the Western States, and had resolved to seek
his home and fortunes in them. From this purpose, however. he was
most unexpectedly diverted, by being drawn into an embittered feeling of
personal hostility toward himself on the part of a score or more of lottery
ticket venders, whose business was then of commanding influence in Portland. It arose from his being professionally retained against one of these
firms, by a simple but honest man from an interior town, who was believed
at the time to have been designedly defrauded in the purchase of a fictitious lottery ticket. But a common cause was made by the venders, first
against the complaining man, and next against his professional adviser,
accompanied, in respect to the latter, by threats of personal violence,
professional ruin, and remediless disgrace; all of which awakened in the
young lawyer a resolution and an energy, of which his assailants had
taken but a partial reckoning. In fact, he had not himself measured his
own vigor previous to that occurrence. Many of them had been esteemed
previously among his professed friends, which made their treatment of
him so much more exasperating to his unsubdued and resentful spirit.
He was young, and dependent on his own reputation wholly for success,
without family influence to protect him. But he felt the more keenly this
attempt to force him to abandon an innocent and injured client against
his sense of duty. Passing over many details of this acrimonious contest,
suffice it to say, that it resulted in the indictment and conviction for illegal
sales of tickets, of about twenty of the leading and wealthy lottery venders, then in full influence over the business and sentiments of the town.
and in a triumphant vindication of himself throughout all his unpleasant
relations to the controversy. This sudden assault upon his personal independence was the occasion of his first attempt at pamphleteering; as the
large advertising patronage of the ticket venders shut his side of the
case entirely out of all the newspapers in the town, and secured the use
of them against him, leaving him for being heard at all by the public
ear, the sole alternative of publishing a pamphlet at his own expense,
and exposing the dangers, corruptions, and ruinous policy of the whole
lottery system. It was a full and elaborate dissection of the whole
trade. Whether this production had or not the effect to awaken the
public judgment to an acknowledgment of those fearful influences of
the lottery system, I do not undertake to decide. But sure it is, that
the public mind became aroused on the subject, and the entire system
was soon after swept away by legislative prohibitions, and has never been
reinstated in any part of the State, and much less had any sanction of
law.
It is a notable fact, indicative of the well-balanced temperament which
at that early day characterized Mr. Smith, that of nearly twenty principals, who were thus arraigned under his complaints, amidst the most
excited feelings of personal hostility toward him, in subsequent years
with a single exception every one of them became his decided friend, and
the excepted one sent from his dying bed to Mr. Smith, his "forgiveness
and blessing v" One only of the number survives at this day, and bears
willing testimony to the accuracy of this presentment of the facts.