About the year 1870 Benjamin F. Kauffman, then a young man recently graduated in the law department of the State University, came to me desiring a situation in my office. I had been so disappointed in the young men who had preceded him that I hesitated about making any further engagement in that direction. Judge George G. Wright, however, who had been one of Mr. Kauffman's preceptors at the law school, warmly recommended him and urged me to give him a position in the office. He was entirely without means and I offered finally to pay his board for six months and take him upon trial. He asked me what he could expect after the expiration of the six months. I told him that after six months if I found that I could get along without him I should discontinue the arrangement. He replied that that was a very hard proposition. I told him no, that he was a young man in good health, full of energy, and if he could not make himself a necessity to my business in six months there was no reason why I should continue even to pay his board. He said if he accepted my proposition, what would I do for him at the end of the six months. I told him that if he made himself a necessity to my business so that I could not get along without him, he would then be master of the situation and I thought there would be no trouble about arranging terms that would be entirely satisfactory to him. He came into the office accordingly and applied himself diligently to business. I occasionally stated to him some question involved in cases I had pending and desired him to examine the authorities and make a brief upon the question involved. He proved to be of very material assistance, very industrious, with a clear mind capable of understanding and analyzing and applying the cases he found in the books bearing upon the question under investigation. At the end of six months I arranged a partnership with him and he continued in that relation for seventeen years, with much profit pecuniarily both to himself and myself. In the year of 1874 I exchanged a lot that I owned on Center street with Mrs. McCauley for property on Fifth street, taking the deed in the name of the firm of Nourse & Kauffman, upon which we built the subsequent year a two story brick building, occupying the south half of the first story for our law offices. We subsequently bought from Thomas Boyd the forty-four feet on the east end of this purchase, giving us the entire forty-four south feet of lot 2, block 22, of the original town, and in the year 1886 we built a four story brick building covering the entire surface of the lot. On the dissolution of my partnership with Mr. Kauffman I formed a partnership with my nephew, Clinton L. Nourse, and we removed into the new building and occupied the front rooms of the second story. Mr. Kauffman in the meantime entered into partnership with one N. T. Guernsey and occupied rooms on the fourth floor of the building.