Mr. Giles was then attorney for Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine. He had been counsel for Howe from the first, when Howe was in extreme poverty and unable to pay fees. In the early stages of the contest Mr. Giles conducted the case without present compensation, and at the end, when Howe's income was enormous for the period, Mr. Giles accepted only very moderate fees, and he was content therewith. Mr. Howe was a peculiar character: odd in his ways, but generous with his income:--so generous that at his death his fortune was very small. In my long acquaintance with Mr. Giles I never knew that he made charges for services against any one or that he ever presented a bill, although he sometimes spoke of the indifference and neglect of his clients in the matter of money. Some paid and others did not. Mr. Howe paid all that Mr. Giles required, but that was very little compared with the service rendered. The litigation over the Howe patent was severe and the questions in a mechanical point of view were nice questions. Mr. Giles began with the invention, and he became a master of the case. Mr. Howe was indebted to Mr. Giles for the success of his litigation which established his claim to the invention, secured to him as the proceeds what might have been an enormous fortune, and placed his name in the list of the names of great inventors. The patent-law practice is the most exhausting branch of the legal profession, and the lawyers and experts suffer from brain diseases in excess of the average of sufferers in other branches of the profession. XX THE YEAR 1854 At the session of the Legislature, January, 1854, the town of Fitchburg, aided by towns and citizens of the vicinity, petitioned for a new county to be composed of towns to be taken from the counties of Middlesex and Worcester and to be called the county of Webster. Mr. Choate was retained for the new county, and I appeared for the county of Middlesex. The hearing by the committee occupied two weeks or more, for an hour or an hour and a half a day. The fees received seem now to have been very small. It was said that Mr. Choate received the sum of five hundred dollars, and my fee was two hundred and fifty dollars. Mr. Choate obtained a favorable report from the committee, but the project failed in the Legislature. It was renewed the succeeding year, when Emory Washburn appeared for the county of Worcester. In those two contests, covering a month of time in all, I had an opportunity to study Mr. Choate in his characteristics as an advocate and as an examiner of witnesses, a branch of the profession in which he had great skill.