ly reviewed
and mastered all the precedents bearing on every phase of your
proposition. It requires desperate labor to do this and will shorten
your life; but such is the hard fate of the profession you choose, and
such is the condition of our absurd system of multiplying reports.

Do not be what is known as a "case lawyer"--an attorney who does not
know the law as a science, but merely looks up precedents and texts
concerning a particular case. You may prevail in your "lawsuit," but
you will not be a lawyer. Stick close to the elemental Blackstone. You
can never get along without Blackstone. Do not read a condensed
edition of that great commentator; it is like reading expurgated
Shakespeare.

I understand that one of the Justices of the Supreme Court still reads
Blackstone once each year. This may be a fable, but I hope it is not.
You cannot do a better thing. Thirty minutes each day will give you
Blackstone from cover to cover in less than a year, with many
holidays. Few modern "text-books" are of permanent value. Pomeroy's
"Equity Jurisprudence" is an exception.

But, of course, I cannot give here a list of those books which should
be your daily food; any really educated lawyer will mention them to
you. The great mass of text-books are nothing more than digests. But
don't miss the introduction to Stephens' "Pleading," and also the
introduction to Stephens' "Digest of the Law of Evidence." Both are
classics and give you the reason and the spirit of our law in
fascinating form.

Let your reading in the law be mainly upon the general principles of
the common law. The study of the civil law will also be
helpful--although English jurisprudence developed of and by itself
with only moderate help from the Romans. Reading statutes is
unprofitable. You should never answer a question or proceed in a case
on the presumption that you remember the statute. The rule of Sir
Edwin Coke ought to be your rule.

"I should," said Coke, "feel that I ought to be put out of my
profession if I could not answer a question in the common law without
referring to the books. I should feel that I ought to be put out of my
profession if I would answer a question in the statute law without
referring to the statute."

_Do not confine yourself to law-books._ A man who does so is like the
farmer who persists in planting the same soil with the same crop;
exhaustion, barrenness, and unprofitableness are the results in each
case. Read generously,