560 JOHN ELBRIDGE HUDSON. 



doubtedly, have been distinguished, but he had a very great and unusual 

 capacity for business, for shaping large affairs and for influencing men, a 

 faculty that would have largely missed its opportunity in the quiet life of 

 a college officer. 



He entered the office of Messrs. Chandler, Shattuck and Thayer, as 

 a student, in Boston, in 1865 or 1866. Admitted to the Suffiilk Bar in 

 October, 1866, he soon became managing clerk in the office of the firm just 

 mentioned on terms which indicated a high appreciation of his ability ; 

 and in February, 1870, on the retirement from the firm of Mr. George 

 0. Shattuck, he became its junior member. Here he continued, during 

 some changes in the firm, until its dissolution in 1878. In the interval 

 between this and the year 1880, when that connection with the telephone 

 business began which was to last for the remaining twenty years of his 

 life, he practised law alone, and added some editorial work upon the tenth 

 volume of the United States Digest. That was a task which it was quite 

 possible to carry through in a seemingly respectable and yet entirely 

 perfunctory fashion. But Mr. Hudson took it up as he took up every- 

 thing, and planned a volume of distinguished merit. On entering the 

 service of the telephone company he had to leave the completion of the 

 book to another ; but he had begun by making a new analysis and classi- 

 fication of the titles of the law employed in the Digest, — one which was 

 so much valued that it forms to-day the model of a recent great under- 

 taking by a Western publishing house, known as the Century Digest, now 

 in general use among lawyers. 



Mr. Hudson was thus an active member of the bar for fourteen years. 

 His preference was for office work ; vei-y seldom could he be induced to 

 try a case, or to argue a point of law before a court. During the nine 

 years that we were connected with the same firm, before I went to the 

 Law School, in 1874, 1 can speak of his work from an intimate knowledge 

 of it. He had the oversight of our accounts, and took charge of a great 

 part of tlie office work, such as the drawing of contracts and wills, and 

 the preparation of pleadings and court papers. In all this, his work was 

 admirably well done. The character of it, at a little later period, attracted 

 the attention of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who sent for 

 him and expressed a wish that he would take the place of Clerk of that 

 court. I recall also the great satisfaction expressed by a client, a very 

 able business man in the China trade, who had had occasion to consult 

 liim about some tangled affairs. "I have not seen," he said, "such a 

 head for complicated accounts since my early experience with John 

 M. Forbes." 



