arguing cases in a little club with Goulding and Beaman and
Peter Olney, and laying the dust of pleading by certain sprinklings
which Huntington Jackson, another ex-soldier, and I managed to contrive
together. A little later in the day, in Bob Morse's, I saw a real writ,
acquired a practical conviction of the difference between assumpsit and
trover, and marvelled open-mouthed at the swift certainty with which a
master of his business turned it off.

Yesterday I was at the law school again, in the chair instead of on the
benches, when my dear partner, Shattuck, came out and told me that in
one hour the Governor would submit my name to the council for a
judgeship, if notified of my assent. It was a stroke of lightning which
changed the whole course of my life.

And the day before yesterday, gentlemen, was thirty-five years, and
yesterday was more than eighteen years, ago. I have gone on feeling
young, but I have noticed that I have met fewer of the old to whom to
show my deference, and recently I was startled by being told that ours
is an old bench. Well, I accept the fact, although I find it hard to
realize, and I ask myself, what is there to show for this half lifetime
that has passed? I look into my book in which I keep a docket of the
decisions of the full court which fall to me to write, and find about a
thousand cases. A thousand cases, many of them upon trifling or
transitory matters, to represent nearly half a lifetime! A thousand
cases, when one would have liked to study to the bottom and to say his
say on every question which the law ever has presented, and then to go
on and invent new problems which should be the test of doctrine, and
then to generalize it all and write it in continuous, logical,
philosophic exposition, setting forth the whole corpus with its roots in
history and its justifications of expedience, real or supposed!

Alas, gentlemen, that is life. I often imagine Shakespeare or Napoleon
summing himself up and thinking: "Yes, I have written five thousand
lines of solid gold, and a good deal of padding--I, who have covered the
milky way with words which outshine the stars!" "Yes, I beat the
Austrians in Italy and elsewhere; I made a few brilliant campaigns, and
I ended in middle life in a _cul-de-sac_--I who had dreamed of a world
monarchy and of Asiatic power!" We cannot live in our dreams. We are
lucky enough if we can give a sample of our best, and if in our hearts
we can feel that it has bee