ve the lake, or on the site of Stone Hall, and
to found a great estate for his little son. From time to time
he bought more land; he laid out avenues and planted them with
trees; and then, the little boy for whom all this joy and beauty
were destined fell ill of diphtheria and died, July 3, 1863,
after a short illness.

The effect upon the grief-stricken father was startling, and to
many who knew him and more who did not, it was incomprehensible.
In the quaint phraseology of one of his contemporaries, he had
"avoided the snares of infidelity" hitherto, but his religion had
been of a conventional type. During the child's illness he
underwent an old-fashioned religious conversion. The miracle
has happened before, to greater men, and the world has always
looked askance. Boston in 1863, and later, was no exception.

Mr. Durant's career as a lawyer had been brilliant and worldly;
he had rarely lost a case. In an article on "Anglo-American Memories"
which appeared in the New York Tribune in 1909, he is described
as having "a powerful head, chiseled features, black hair, which
he wore rather long, an olive complexion, and eyes which flashed
the lightnings of wrath and scorn and irony; then suddenly the
soft rays of sweetness and persuasion for the jury. He could
coax, intimidate, terrify; and his questions cut like knives."
The author of "Bench and Bar in Massachusetts", who was in college
with him, says of him: "During the five years of his practice
at the Middlesex Bar he underwent such an initiation into the
profession as no other county could furnish. Shrewdness, energy,
resource, strong nerves and mental muscles were needed to ward
off the blows which the trained gladiators of this bar were
accustomed to inflict. With the lessons learned at the Middlesex Bar
he removed to Boston in 1847, where he became associated with
the Honorable Joseph Bell, the brother-in-law of Rufus Choate,
and began a career almost phenomenal in its success. His management
of cases in court was artistic. So well taken were the preliminary
steps, so deeply laid was the foundation, so complete and
comprehensive was the preparation of evidence and so adroitly
was it brought out, so carefully studied and understood were the
characters of jurors,--with their whims and fancies and
prejudices,--that he won verdict after verdict in the face of
the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at
the head of the jury lawyers of the