Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less
ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied
to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always
call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper
obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had
been "charged with resorting to tricks unbecoming the dignity of
a lawyer," but the writer adds that it is an open question if
some, or indeed all of them were not legitimate enough, and might
not have been paralleled by the practices of some of the ablest
of British and Irish barristers. Both in law and in business--for
he had important commercial interests--he had prospered. He was
rich and a man of the world. Boston, although critical, had not
found it unnatural that he should make himself talked about in
his conduct of jury trials; but the conspicuousness of his conversion
was of another sort: it offended against good taste, and incurred
for him the suspicion of hypocrisy.

For, with that ardor and impetuosity which seem always to have
made half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared that
so far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel were
irreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case which
he had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from which
Mr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the last
one he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last time
in a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, when
he won for the college the right to confer degrees, a privilege
which had not been specifically included in the original charter.

His zeal in conducting religious meetings also offended conventional
people. It was unusual, and therefore unsuitable, for a layman
to preach sermons in public. St. Francis and his preaching friars
had established no precedent in Boston of the 'sixties and
'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism
might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most
part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant,
possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls
to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls
and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and
experience which had made him so successful a pleader before
judge and jury, now, when he was fired with zeal for Christ's
cause, made him almost irresistible as a preacher. Very many
were led by him to co