If I had been
sufficiently fortunate to come under Professor Thayer, of the Harvard
Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer
can do a great work for justice and against legalism.

But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of the teaching of the
law books and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice.
The _caveat emptor_ side of the law, like the _caveat emptor_ side
of business, seemed to me repellent; it did not make for social fair
dealing. The "let the buyer beware" maxim, when translated into actual
practice, whether in law or business, tends to translate itself further
into the seller making his profit at the expense of the buyer, instead
of by a bargain which shall be to the profit of both. It did not seem
to me that the law was framed to discourage as it should sharp practice,
and all other kinds of bargains except those which are fair and of
benefit to both sides. I was young; there was much in the judgment which
I then formed on this matter which I should now revise; but, then as
now, many of the big corporation lawyers, to whom the ordinary members
of the bar then as now looked up, held certain standards which were
difficult to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose every
high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been obliged to earn
every cent I spent, I should have gone whole-heartedly into the business
of making both ends meet, and should have taken up the law or any other
respectable occupation--for I then held, and now hold, the belief that
a man's first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care of those
dependent upon him; and I then believed, and now believe, that the
greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily
married, and that no other form of success or service, for either man
or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative. But it
happened that I had been left enough money by my father not to make
it necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself and my
family. I had enough to get bread. What I had to do, if I wanted butter
and jam, was to provide the butter and jam, but to count their cost
as compared with other things. In other words, I made up my mind that,
while I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money the
secondary instead of the primary object of my career. If I had had
no money at all, then my first duty would have been to earn it in any
honest fashion. As