At the next session of congress the railroad company obtained the passage of a law constituting the bridge a part of the mail route of the United States, and the court subsequently dismissed the plaintiff's case. Thus we were successful in gaining our case by knowing when it was best to do nothing. The use of the bridge was invaluable to our clients, and the railroad company sent me a draft for two hundred dollars as compensation for the short speech I had made advising Judge Grant in the court that we had no instructions to do anything in the case, and the responsibility of our failure to do anything, if injurious to our client, would rest with General Howe, attorney in chief of the road. Whilst upon this question of management I will give you an account of another case of some importance that resulted in our complete success because we did something that we did not learn out of any of our law books. A certain young woman in the last stages of consumption had been turned out of the house of her near relatives, and compelled to take up her quarters in a second-class hotel in Des Moines during her last sickness. She had made a will in which she willed to the Catholic priest of the city, Father Brazil, a valuable tract of land for the use and benefit of the Catholic church. After her death her relatives, who had neglected her shamefully during her sickness, brought suit to contest the validity of this will upon the ground of undue influence on the part of Father Brazil, and mental incapacity on the part of the deceased. Judge Kavanaugh, a young bachelor then about thirty years of age and a member of the Catholic church, and since then judge of the court in Chicago, Illinois, had been employed by Father Brazil to defend the suit, and he subsequently came to me and retained me to assist him in the trial of the cause. During the sickness of the deceased she had employed a professional nurse, a young woman about thirty years of age. We were informed before the trial came on that the relatives who were contesting the will had been very courteous and kind and generous toward this young nurse woman, and during the holidays had made her valuable presents in consideration of her kindness to the deceased. At the opening of the term I noticed this young woman came into court, receiving the courtesies and attention of Judge Cole, who was counsel for the relatives that were contesting the will. She was rather a handsome woman, evidently intelligent and quick-witted, rather fond of admiration, and as she was to be the star witness for the other side of the case, I at once made up my mind that the whole case must turn upon her testimony. As the deceased had been frequently under the influence of opiates, administered by the physician for the purpose of relieving her suffering from time to time, it would be a very easy matter for a young woman gifted as this one was with facility of speech, to make the most of the incoherent utterances of the patient