Lawyer
Centurion, 1896–1922
Born 15 April 1849 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Died 25 January 1922 in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Proposed by Austen G. Fox, Edward W. Sheldon, and Macgrane Coxe
Elected 7 March 1896 at age forty-six
Proposer of:
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
Sidney Smith was one of the old-school lawyers who learned their profession at a time when the rules of practice were far more technical than they now are. This circumstance sometimes brought injustice to clients, but it made the lawyer more precise, more exact and perhaps also more exacting. He himself was subject to the rules, and he insisted upon conformity from others.
Smith profited by this training, and blended with its results a quiet humor which made conversation with him a pleasure. Beginning his active practice at a time when business was done on a much smaller scale than nowadays when Rufus Choate, then the leader of the American bar, thought himself liberally compensated in the later fifties with a fee of $100 for the trying of his last great case Smith carried with him into his later years something of the simplicity, of the plain living and high thinking, which characterized the old-time American lawyer.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1923 Century Association Yearbook
