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In the summer of 1875 I felt that obtaining a knowledge of the law in this scrappy, unsystematic fashion was unsatisfactory, and that, therefore, I would leave Shaffer’s employ, attend Columbia Law School to get a thorough grounding of the law, and arrange for future easy access the odd bits of legal knowledge that I had absorbed in the offices. As I needed an income to enable me to do this, I secured a position as night-school teacher at $15 a week in the school on Forty-second Street near Third Avenue.

At that time Forty-third Street had not yet been cut through, and on top of the rocks was a shanty-town occupied by squatters. As I had the adult class, my pupils were from eighteen to forty-five years old, some of them denizens of the rocks, while others were hardworking carpenters, brakemen, butchers, factory workers, a plumber’s assistant, a coachman, and a blacksmith.

I particularly remember the latter three, because the plumber’s assistant came to the school to inveigle some of the other boys to play cards with him in one of the rear seats, and to amuse himself by throwing tobacco quids and beans while I, with my back turned to the class, would be engaged in explaining things on the blackboard. I was nineteen years of age, husky, weighing 180 pounds, and unafraid even of a plumber’s boy. As my weekly stipend of $15 was my sole support and its retention depended upon my being able to maintain discipline and keep up the attendance, I was not going to permit this loafer’s antics to defeat me—and one evening when I caught him playing cards, I forcibly ejected him from the classroom. Thenceforth my tenure of office was assured and continued to the closing day exercises, at which I had the pleasure of rewarding the coachman, Morgan O’Toole, with a prize for the greatest advancement made by any pupil. This man was very anxious to learn fractions. During the first three weeks of the session, every Friday evening I had succeeded in teaching them to him. Every following Monday evening his mind was an absolute blank as to fractions, and the fourth week I asked him to come to my house both Saturday and Sunday, and gave him private lessons. His joy on the next Monday when he found he had retained his knowledge is still a vivid memory in my mind.