Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

I said: “I think you are a little mixed in your tenses this morning, Mr. Chief Justice.”

“ Not as to the last fact,” said he.

I said he was brusque in his manner, especially on the bench. One day shortly before my Charlestown case came up I was going down in the cars from Lowell to Boston, and at the request of a merchant friend of mine, whose watch dog had been poisoned, I was taking down my own to leave with him. My dog was an immense mastiff, with a black muzzle, very quiet but very powerful. The smoking-car was always a sort of exchange as we went down. It was used by the passengers for playing cards and for familiar chat. I had no sooner entered the car with the dog behind me than I was saluted with: “Halloa, halloa, Butler, where are you going this morning?”

“ Down to the Supreme Court, gentlemen.”

“ Is that your dog?”

“Yes.”

“ What are you taking him down to court for?”

“ Oh,” I said, “I thought I would show him the chief justice so as to teach him to growl.”

Shortly afterward, the Charlestown case was tried and decided upon every point in my behalf, the chief justice delivering the opinion, and it was so conclusive that it put off the annexation of Charlestown to Boston for twenty years.

Shortly after this I called in the course of business into the consultation room where sat the chief justice alone, and after the usual salutation he began: “Well, Mr. Butler, you won your Charlestown case?”

“Oh,” I said, “thanks, Mr. Chief Justice; I am exceedingly obliged to you for giving me that case.”

“ Well, then, Mr. Butler, I take it you have no fault to find with that last growl of the chief justice.”

My last act toward him was after he resigned at the end of thirty years service as chief justice. I was chairman of the committee of the bar to make a proper address on that occasion in their behalf. Our committee went to his house on Mt. Vernon Street, as he was not able to come out in the inclement weather. I took great pains with that address, feeling every appreciative word in it from my very heart. The chief justice attempted to reply to it, but his feelings