One day after we had been married less than a year my husband came home looking so studiously unconcerned that I knew at once he had something to tell me.
"Nellie, what would you think," he began casually, "if I should be appointed a Judge of the Superior Court?"
"Oh, don't try to be funny," I exclaimed. "That's perfectly impossible."
But it was not impossible, as he soon convinced me. My father had just refused the same appointment and it was difficult to believe that it could now be offered to my husband who was only twenty-nine years old. It was a position made vacant by the retirement from the Bench of Judge Judson Harmon who was my husband's senior by more than a decade.
One of the most prominent and prosperous law firms in Cincinnati was that of Hoadley, Johnston and Colston, and both Mr. Hoadley and Mr. Johnston had been invited to go to New York and become partners of Mr. Edward Lauterbach who was then doing an enormous business.
They went, and the old firm in Cincinnati being broken up, Mr. Colston asked Judge Harmon, who was then on the Superior Court, to take Mr. Hoadley's place. Mr. Harmon decided to do so, but he was anxious to resign his judgeship in such a way as to leave a long enough vacancy to attract a good man. It was an elective office and the law provided that a vacancy occurring within thirty days before election could not be filled by an election until the following year. Judge Harmon resigned so as to make the appointment for a period of fourteen months. After my father declined it, the choice lay between Mr. Taft and Mr. Bellamy Storer. Mr. Taft always thought that but for his
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