O'CONOR, CHARLES. 



with a row of holes in its side. It was the 

 invention of an Italian mountain-boy, made 

 for his own amusement. It was molded of clay, 

 hollow inside, with a mouth-piece, and a row 

 of holes by way of keys. It was then baked 

 and glazed. Its tones were very sweet, but of 



OCAKINA, SECOND FORM. 



course the range was exceedingly limited, for 

 it could only produce notes from do natural to 

 fa of the octave, going through the notes of 

 the chromatic scale. It was a long time before 

 the ocarina was other than this, but finally a 

 band of wandering French minstrels attempted 

 to give entire concerts with ocarinas, and the 

 limits set upon their programme caused them 

 to begin the expansion of the primitive melody- 

 maker. They manufactured the instrument in 

 different sizes, so that 

 they soon had the so- 

 prano ocarina, the size 

 of a small sweet-potato, 

 and the double-bass oca- 

 rina, the size of a large 

 pumpkin, with all the 

 grades between. In all 

 these the principle was 

 unchanged, and it could 

 not be made to harmo- 

 nize with other instru- 

 ments. So the musicians 

 thought again, and the 

 result was that a piston 

 was introduced, which 

 lowered or raised the 

 note according as it was 

 drawn out or pushed in. 

 A little later, and a row 

 of keys was added, corresponding with the row 

 of holes, when a second octave changed the 

 home-made affair into an article of such dig- 

 nity that it has appeared in philharmonic 

 concerts. 



A writer for "La Nature " has made a still 

 further experiment upon the ocarina principle. 

 He took a wooden gourd, made some tiny 

 holes in it, arranged much like those in the 

 ocarina, fastened to it the mouth-piece of an 

 old clarionet .that was provided with a reed, 

 and then enlarged the apertures until the true 

 tones were obtained. 



O'CONOR, CHARLES, an American lawyer, 

 born in New York city, Jan. 22, 1804; died in 

 Nantucket, May 12, 1884. His father, Thomas 

 O'Conor, was a native of Roscommon coun- 

 ty, Ireland, emigrated to this country in 1801, 

 and shortly after married a daughter of Hugh 

 O'Conor, who was not related to him. With 



OCARINA, THIRD FORM. 



William Kernan and others^ the refugee be- 

 came interested in the settlement of a tract 

 of 40,000 acres in Steuben county, N. Y., and 

 the great lawyer's first recollections of life 

 were there. At the age of six he returned 

 with his mother to New York, where he re- 

 sided till his seventy-sixth year, when he 

 settled in Massachusetts. His education was 

 somewhat desultory, but his father gave per- 

 sonal attention to his studies. At the age of 

 sixteen he began the study of law, which he 

 pursued in the offices of Henry W. Stannard, 

 Stephen D. Lemoyne, and Joseph D. Fay. He 

 was admitted to the bar in 1824, and very 

 soon, by indefatigable study, acquired a high 

 local reputation, being in early life pitted 

 against the leaders of the New York bar. His 

 first reported argument was in the case of Div- 

 ver m. McLaughlin. The Forrest divorce case 

 brought him into the widest national reputa- 

 tion at one step. Contending against so able 

 counsel as John Van Buren, at the age of forty- 

 six, he brought it to a triumphant issue, secur- 

 ing the divorce with liberal alimony for Mrs. 

 Forrest. For his conduct of this case he was 

 presented with two silver vases ; one of them 

 was from thirty ladies of New York, the other 

 from sixty members of the bar. By a pro- 

 vision of his will, these vases were left to the 

 Law Institute of New York city. The case of 

 the slave Jack in 1835, the Lispenard will case 

 in 1843, the Lemmon slave case in 1856 (in 

 which he was opposed to William M. Evarts 

 and Chester A. Arthur, who successfully de- 

 fended the slaves), and the Parrish will case in 

 1862, were among the most notable of his cases 

 up to the period of the dvil war. In the Al- 

 maden Mining Company's case he made one of 

 the greatest arguments ever delivered before 

 the Supreme Court of the United States. He 

 was also employed in the litigation concerning 

 the Goodyear India-rubber patent. He was a 

 member of the Constitutional Conventions of 

 the State of New York of 1846 and 1864. 



His interest in Ireland was always great, his 

 ancestor Charles O'Conor, of Bellanagare, hav- 

 ing been one of the founders of the patriotic 

 movement that has lasted for two centuries. 

 In 1848 he became one of the " Directory of 

 the Friends of Ireland," organized in antici- 

 pation of a rising there, which had enrolled 

 among its members Horace Greeley and Robert 

 Emmet. In August of the same year a great 

 Irish patriotic meeting was held in Vauxhall 

 Gardens, New York city, which was addressed 

 by Bishop Hughes and Gen. Hiram Walbridge. 

 Mr. O'Conor presided at this, and also at a 

 second demonstration a week later. In the 

 same year he was the Democratic candidate 

 for Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New 

 York, and ran 3,000 votes ahead of the ticket, 

 but was defeated. Under President Pierce he 

 held for fifteen months the office of District 

 Attorney of the State of New York. 



When civil war was threatened, he was 

 anxious to avert' it, but, a life-long and most 



