As Vail built up the young telephone business, they held it from being torn to shreds in an orgy of speculative competition.

Smith prepared the comprehensive plan of defence.

By his sagacity and experience he was enabled to mark out the general principles upon which Bell had a right to stand.
Usually, he closed the case, and he was immensely effective as he would declaim, in his deep voice: "I submit, Your Honor, that the literature of the world does not afford a passage which states how the human voice can be electrically transmitted, previous to the patent of Mr.Bell." His death, like his life, was dramatic.

He was on his feet in the courtroom, battling against an infringer, when, in the middle of a sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the responsibilities he had carried for twelve years.

Storrow, in a different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith.