THE PHILADELPHIA BAR
At this time I frequently saw flourishing about the town a young man called “Coal Oil Johnnie.” He came of a poor and uneducated family, in the western part of the state, who for generations had wrung a scanty subsistence from an infertile soil. Suddenly oil in quantities was found under their feet and he became rich to profusion. He came to the city to scatter his wealth, gave out ten dollar bills and disdained to take the change, bought a team of horses and tiring of them gave them to his hostler, and built an opera house in Cincinnati. Ere long he earned a livelihood by acting as doorkeeper for this opera house.
The bruit of my successful examination spreading around to some extent, I was offered a position in three different offices—those of E. Spencer Miller, Daniel Dougherty and Frederick Heyer—at a salary which varied from $600 to $800 a year, but I concluded it was better to depend upon my own exertions, and I rented the front room at 705 Walnut street from George L. Crawford. His clients passed through my office and I had the great pleasure of seeing them daily go by me in numbers. He was a competent lawyer. He had a little bronchial cough, and he prepared and tried the cases which came to Benjamin Harris Brewster. The latter, at that time, was one of the remarkable characters at the bar. He had been badly burned in childhood and the accident left his face not only ugly but repulsive, since the eyeball was exposed, the lids reddened, the face distorted and the lips thickened into rolls. If this condition of countenance made him sensitive he gave, in manner, no indication of the fact. I have heard women say that, when they listened to his words and voice, they forgot all about his features and he was twice married, the last time to a daughter of Robert J. Walker, once Secretary of the Treasury. He wore a velvet coat, a light vest, a stock, and ruffles at the end of his shirt sleeves. Late in life he became Attorney General of the United States. He had a gift of oratory and a touch of charlatanry and once was taken in to argue a case
