ten in
his great service as Chief Justice of Massachusetts for thirty
years. No other judicial fame in the country can rival his,
with the single exception of Marshall. He was induced to
undertake the office of Chief Justice very reluctantly, by
the strong personal urgency of Mr. Webster. Mr. Webster
used to give a humorous account of the difficulty he had in
overcoming the morbid scruples of the great simple-hearted
intellectual giant. He found Mr. Shaw in his office in a
cloud of tobacco-smoke. Mr. Webster did not himself smoke,
and was at some disadvantage during the interview for that
reason.

Mr. Shaw was rather short in stature and, in the latter part
of his life, somewhat corpulent. He had a massive head, a
low forehead, and strong and rather coarse features. He reminded
you of the statues of Gog and Magog in the Guildhall in London.
His hair came down over his forehead, and when he had been
away from home for a week or two, so that his head got no combing
but his own, it was in a sadly tangled mass. His eye was
dull, except when it kindled in discussion, or when he was
stirred to some utterance of grave displeasure.

There is an anecdote of Mr. Choate which occasionally goes
the rounds of the papers, and which is often repeated quite
inaccurately. The true version is this. I heard it within
a few hours after it happened, and have heard it at first
hand more than once since.

Mr. Choate was sitting next to Judge Hoar in the bar when
the Chief Justice was presiding, and the Suffolk docket was
being called. The Chief Justice said something which led
Mr. Choate to make a half-humorous and half-displeased remark
about Shaw's roughness of look and manner, to which Judge
Hoar replied: "After all, I feel a reverence for the old
Chief Justice."

"A reverence for him, my dear fellow?" said Choate. "So do
I. I bow down to him as the wild Indian does before his wooden
idol. I know he's ugly; but I bow to a superior intelligence."

Judge Shaw's mind moved very slowly. When a case was argued,
it took him a good while to get the statement of facts into
his mind. It was hard for him to deal readily with unimportant
matters, or with things which, to other people, were matters
of course. If the simplest motion were made, he had to unlimber
the heavy artillery of his mind, go down to the roots of the
question, consider the matter in all possible relations, and
deal with it as if he were besieging a for