high companionship to be with him at such times. His
ear was open to catch the note of every bird, which came to
him like voices of well-beloved friends; he knew the brooks
from their sources to their mouths, and the rivers murmured
to him the songs they sang in the Auld Lang Syne. But deep
as was the joy of these visits, they did not allure him from
the more rugged paths of labor and duty."

The wisdom of Nelson's selection, if it need vindication,
is abundantly established by the memorial of him reported
by a committee, of which Lewis S. Dabney was chairman, and
adopted by the Suffolk Bar. The Bar, speaking of the doubt
expressed in the beginning by those who feared an inland lawyer
on the Admiralty Bench, goes on to say:

"Those who knew him well, however, knew that he had been a
successful master and referee in many complicated cases of
great importance; that his mathematical and scientific knowledge
acquired in his early profession as an engineer was large
and accurate, and would be useful in his new position; that
he who had successfully drawn important public acts would
be a successful interpreter of such acts; that always a student
approaching every subject, not as an advocate but as a judicial
observer, he would give that attention to whatever was new
among the problems of his judicial office that would make
him their best master and interpreter, and that what in others
might be considered weakness or indolence was but evidence
of a painful shrinking from displaying in public a naturally
firm, strong, earnest and persistent character, a character
which would break out through the limitations of nature whenever
the occasion required it.

"Those who, as his associates upon the Bench, or as practitioners
before him at the Bar, have had occasion to watch his long
and honorable career, now feel that the judgment of his friends
was the best and that his appointment has been justified;
and those who have known him as an Associate Justice of the
Circuit Court of Appeals have felt this even more strongly."

Another striking figure of my time was Horace Gray. He was
in the class before me at Harvard, though considerably younger.
I knew him by sight only in those days. He was very tall,
with an exceedingly youthful countenance, and a head that
looked then rather small of so large-limbed a youth--rather
awkward in his gait and bearing. But after he reached manhood
he grew into one of the finest-looking men of