self getting a respectable place in the profession
my early ambitions were so far changed and expanded that I
hoped I might some day be appointed to the Supreme Court of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It seemed to me then,
as it seems to me now, that there could be no more delightful
life for a man competent to the service than one spent in
discussing with the admirable lawyers, who have always adorned
that Bench, the great questions of jurisprudence, involving
the rights of citizens, and the welfare of the Commonwealth,
and helping to settle them by authority. This ambition was
also disappointed. I have twice received the offer of a seat
on that Bench, under circumstances which rendered it out of
the question that I should accept it, although on both occasions
I longed exceedingly to do so.

Shortly after I was admitted to the Bar, good fortune brought
me at once into the largest practice in the great County of
Worcester, although that Bar had always been, before and since,
one of the ablest in the country. Judge Emory Washburn, afterward
Governor and Professor of Law at Harvard, and writer on jurisprudence,
had the largest practice in the Commonwealth, west of Boston,
and I suppose with one exception, the largest in the Commonwealth
outside of Boston. He asked me to become his partner in June,
1852. I had then got a considerable clientage of my own.
Early in 1853 he sailed for Europe, intending to return in
the fall. I was left in charge of his business during his
six months' absence, talking with the clients about cases
in which he was already retained, and receiving their statements
as to cases in which they desired to retain him on his return.
Before he reached home he was nominated for Governor by the
Whig Convention, to which office he was elected by the Legislature
in the following January. So he had but a few weeks to attend
to his law business before entering upon the office of Governor.
I kept on with it, I believe without losing a single client.
That winter I had extraordinarily good fortune, due I think
very largely to the kindly feeling of the juries toward so
young a man attempting to undertake such great responsibilities.

My professional life from January 1, 1850, until the 4th
of March, 1869, was a life of great and incessant labor.
When the court was in session I was constantly engaged in
jury trials. Day after day, and week after week, I had to
pass from one side of the court-house