nder foreign laws.

Again, the multiplication of decisions on all subjects has reached a
point where practise by precedent, to be exhaustive and thorough, has
become practically impossible; and so the problem that confronted the
Roman emperors, and terminated in the Pandects of Justinian, is now
demanding immediate solution at the hands of American legislators,
lawyers, and jurists.

So, you see, my ambitious young friend, that by no means all has been
done in the law, and that what has been done is so bulky, unorganized,
and confused, that even to reduce, rationalize, and systematize it is
the greatest task of all. The trouble will therefore be with yourself,
and not with conditions, if you remain an underling in this great
profession.

Take literature--take imaginative literature. More can be said on its
possibilities than on those of the law--and I enlarged upon the
unexplored fields of the law merely to outline the immensity of the
great things yet to be done in the law's domain. Is it not plain that
the great novel of modern society is yet to be written? The contest
between human nature and the complex machinery of our industrial
system, and the mastery of human nature over the latter, present a
theme such as Homer, or Vergil, or Dante never had.

The world awaits this genius! If you are not he, but talented in that
direction, there are a thousand phases of American life that are of
permanent historic value, which are rapidly passing away forever, and
need to be perpetuated by literature and art.

In poetry, the master singer of modern days has not yet appeared.
There have been faint signs of him, a suggestion of him, an indistinct
prophecy of him, in nearly all of the world's singers for a hundred
years. Some day he will come. It may be soon, and then he will sound
that note which shall again thrill the hearts and again turn
heavenward the eyes of men all round the world.

The point I am making is that the great things in poetry have not all
been done. On the contrary, it is the same old cry the world has heard
since Homer. Until Shakespeare wrote, it appeared, to those who had no
vision, that the immortal things in literature had all been done. But
these immortal things and things not immortal, things permanent and
things temporary, were only food and material for Shakespeare.

Literature, then, has only been furnishing the materials--the
timber--for the structure that is yet to be built. But the timber i