s, to a large extent, life in the broad
glare of day, under the scrutiny of keen-eyed observers and merciless
critics. In every cause there are two attorneys engaged, of whom one is
a sentinel upon the other; and a blunder, a slip, an exaggeration, or a
misrepresentation, never escapes without instant exposure. The popular
reputation of a lawyer, it has been well said, is but the winnowed and
sifted judgment which reaches the world through the bar, and is
therefore made up after severe ordeal and upon standard proof.

These observations are deemed not inappropriate as an introduction to a
sketch of the life of one of the most eminent lawyers of New England,
whose career may be regarded as signally worthy of imitation.

HENRY WILLIAM PAINE was born August 30th, 1810, in Winslow,
Maine. His father, Lemuel Paine, a native of Foxborough, Mass., was a
graduate of Brown University, and a lawyer by profession, who began
practice in Winslow, Maine, in partnership with Gen. Ripley, afterwards
the hero of Lundy's Lane. Owing to poor health, Mr. Paine, sen., soon
abandoned the law for other pursuits. He was familiar with the
representative English authors, and specially fond of the Greek language
and literature, which he cultivated during his life. He had a tenacious
memory, and could quote Homer by the page. Henry Paine's mother, Jane
Thomson Warren, was the daughter of Ebenezer T. Warren, of Foxborough,
the brother of General Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. Of the
three children of Lemuel and Jane T. (Warren) Paine, Henry William was
the second.

After the usual preparatory education, Mr. Paine entered Waterville
College (now Colby University) in 1826, and graduated in 1830, at the
age of twenty, with the highest honor of his class. During the last year
of the college course, he was principal of Waterville Academy, then just
founded for the preparation of young men for college. He spent eight
hours a day in charge of his pupils, of whom there were eighty-two, and
at the same time kept up with his class in the college studies. As a
teacher he was greatly beloved and respected by his pupils, whose
affection was won by no lack of discipline, but by his kindly sympathy,
encouragement, and watchful aid in their studies. He had an eye that
could beam with tenderness, or dart lightnings; and it was a fine moral
spectacle, illustrating the superiority of mental over physical force,
to see a bully of the school, almost twice hi