Strong.] 14 [Jan. 5, 



to severer study. It cannot be doubted that no incon- 

 siderable portion of the power and skill of Mr. Binney, 

 Mr. Sergeant, Mr. Chauncey and others who honored 

 the Philadelphia bar, and gave it a wide reputation 

 during the first half of the present century, was due to 

 the fact that at the commencement of their profes- 

 sional life, they were introduced into association with 

 the leaders of the old bar, a body of men who would 

 have graced Westminster Hall in its palmiest days. 

 They may have thought their apprenticeship hard and 

 long, but it yielded abundant fruit. 



Mr. Binney was not discouraged by the outlook. 

 With a resolute will, with patient waiting, and with 

 unintermitted devotion to study, he bided his time — 

 and it came. His success in obtaining employment 

 was not speedy. For six years after his admission to 

 the bar, he had a most meager clientage, and, as he re- 

 marked afterwards, his porridge would have been very 

 insipid, if he had had to buy salt for it with what he 

 made at the bar. But the time was not lost. He 

 employed it largely in waiting upon the courts, and 

 watching the course of trials, a practice which he after- 

 wards often commended to young men, assuring them 

 that, if attentive, they would learn as much in court as 

 they could in their offices, during the same hours, and 

 that what they learned would be more useful to them 

 in acquiring the art of managing causes. 



In April, 1804, he was married to a daughter of Col. 

 * John Cox, of Trenton, New Jersey, an efficient officer 



