s a profound, accurate and able
jurist. The great interests of clients were safe with him.
To him the profession of the lawyer was a sacred office. I
never think of him without recalling Cicero's beautiful description
in the "De Oratore" of the old age of the great lawyer:

Quit est enim praeclarius quam honoribus et republicae muneribus
perfunctum senem posee suo jure dicere id quot apud Enium
dicit ille Pythias Apollo, se esse eum, unde sibi, si no populi
et reges, at onmnes sui cives consilium expetant;

suarum rerum incerti quos ego ope mea ex
incertis certos compotesque consili dimitto
ut ne res temere tractent turbidas.

Est enim sine dubio domus jurisconsulti totius oraculum civitatis.

Mr. Bacon lived to celebrate his golden wedding, and ended
a stainless and honored life in a ripe old age, mourned by
the whole community, of which he had been a pillar and an
ornament. His portrait hangs in the Court House where he
would have loved best to be remembered.

In my early days at the Worcester Bar there were a good many
bright men, young and old, who had their offices in the country
towns, but who tried a good many cases before juries. All
the courts for the county in those days were held in Worcester.
Among these country lawyers was old Nat Wood of Fitchburg,
now a fine city; then a thriving country town. Mr. Wood
had a great gift of story-telling, and he understood very
well the character and ways of country farmers. He used to
come down from Fitchburg at the beginning of the week, stop
at the old Sykes Tavern where the jurymen and witnesses put
up, spend the evening in the bar-room getting acquainted with
the jurymen and telling them stories. So when he had a case
to try, he was apt to have a very friendly tribunal. His
enemies used to say that he always contrived to sleep with
one juryman himself, and have his client sleep with another,
when he had a case coming on. He was quite irritable and
hasty, and would sometimes break out with great indignation
at some fancied impropriety of the other side, without fully
understanding what was going on. I was once examining a witness
who had led rather a roving and vagabond life. I asked him
where he had lived and he named seven different towns in
each of which he had dwelt within a very short time. I observed:
"Seven mighty cities claimed great Homer dead." Wood instantly
sprang to his feet with great indignation. "Brother Hoar,
I wish you woul