anifesting by my life
that those extraordinary advantages of education, secured to me by
my father, had not been worthlessly bestowed,--on coming into life
after such great advantages, and having the duty of selecting a
profession, I chose that of the Bar. I closed my education as a
lawyer with one of the most eminent jurists of the age,--Theophilus
Parsons, of Newburyport, at that time a practising lawyer, but
subsequently chief justice of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Under his instruction and advice I closed my education, and
commenced what I can hardly call the practice of the law in the
city of Boston.

"At that time, though I cannot say I was friendless, yet my
circumstances were not independent. My father was then in a
situation of great responsibility and notoriety in the government
of the United States. But he had been long absent from his own
country, and still continued absent from that part of it to which
he belonged, and of which I was a native. I went, therefore, as a
volunteer, an adventurer, to Boston, as possibly many of you whom I
now see before me may consider yourselves as having come to
Cincinnati. I was without support of any kind. I may say I was a
stranger in that city, although almost a native of that spot. I say
I can hardly call it practice, because for the space of one year
from that time it would be difficult for me to name any practice
which I had to do. For two years, indeed, I can recall nothing in
which I was engaged that may be termed practice, though during the
second year there were some symptoms that by persevering patience
practice might come in time. The third year I continued this
patience and perseverance, and, having little to do, occupied my
time as well as I could in the study of those laws and institutions
which I have since been called to administer. At the end of the
third year I had obtained something which might be called practice.

"The fourth year I found it swelling to such an extent that I felt
no longer any concern as to my future destiny as a member of that
profession. But in the midst of the fourth year, by the will of the
first President of the United States, with which the Senate was
pleased to concur, I was selected for a station, not, perhaps, of
more usefulness, but of greater consequence in the estimation of