RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
bar only four years, but having assisted throughout in the preparation of the evidence he knew the ease from beginning to end and he made a speech which lasted four hours and a half. Mr. Taft thinks this was an opportunity improved which had an important influence on his career. The special part it played in his subsequent promotion I shall speak of.
The result in the Campbell case was at first disappointing because the Court which heard the disbarment charges found Campbell guilty only on minor charges and, by a vote of two to one acquitted him on those which would have required his disbarment. But the public disapproval of the Court’s decision and the moral effect of the proceedings drove Campbell from the city and the State and accomplished the purpose of the bar association.
The Campbell trial was finished in December, 1884, and in January, 1885, Mr. Rufus Smith, an old and intimate friend, entered the office of County Solicitor and tendered to Mr. Taft the place of Assistant County Solicitor. The advantage of this office was that it paid $2500 a year and that, while he acted as counsel for the county, he still was able to continue the general practice of law with his partner, Major Lloyd.
Mr. Taft and I were engaged in May, 1885, and were married in June of the following year.
In the summer of 1885 my mother, moved I think by some sentimental attachment to the scenes of her childhood, decided that she would take us all up into the Adirondacks, to a little camp near Lowville. My two older sisters were married so there were only six of us left in the family, but we were still something of a handful to move in a body. However, my mother was equal to it. We packed almost a van load of trunks and set out, and one evening we arrived, over the worst corduroy road that was ever laid down, at a little cottage beside a beautiful lake in a setting of pine-clad
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