s size, and who,
apparently, could have crushed him if he chose, quail under his eagle
gaze, when arraigned at the principal's desk for a misdemeanor. It is
doubtful if ever he flogged a scholar; but he sometimes brought the
ruler down upon the desk with a force that made the schoolroom ring, and
inspired the lawless with a very wholesome respect for his authority.
The fact that from that day to this his office has always been a kind of
Mecca, to which his old pupils, whether dwellers in "Araby the Blest" or
in the sandy wastes of life, have made pious pilgrimages, shows how
deeply he was loved and how highly he was honored as a teacher.

Immediately after graduation Mr. Paine was appointed a Tutor of
Waterville College, and discharged the duties of that office for a year.
He then began the study of law in the office of his uncle, the late
Samuel S. Warren, of China, Maine, and continued the study in the office
of William Clark, a noted lawyer in Hallowell, Maine, and, for a year,
in the Law School of Harvard University, where he was the classmate of
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and B.F. Thomas. In the autumn of 1834,
he was admitted to the bar of Kennebec County, Maine. Beginning his
professional career at Hallowell, he prosecuted it there with signal
success till the summer of 1854, having for twenty years a practice not
surpassed by that of any member of the Maine bar. During the sessions of
1836, 1837, and again in that of 1853, he represented the citizens of
Hallowell in the lower house of the State Legislature. He was also for
five years Attorney for Kennebec County. During his stay in Maine, he
was repeatedly offered a seat on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court
of that State; but, having an unconquerable aversion to office of every
kind, civil or political, he declined to accept the honor pressed upon
him. In 1853 he was offered by his political friends, then the dominant
party in the Legislature, a seat in the United States Senate; but he
refused to be nominated. In the summer of 1854, in accordance with a
long cherished resolve, which he had been prevented from executing
before by a promise to his father that he would not leave Maine during
that parent's lifetime, he removed to Cambridge, Mass., and opened a
law-office in Boston. Here he at once entered upon a large and lucrative
practice, both in the State and Federal courts, which kept steadily
increasing for over twenty years, till declining health a