his time. I
believe he was the tallest man in Boston. He expanded in
every way to a figure which corresponded to his stately height.
He was the grandson of the famous William Gray, the great
merchant and ship-owner of New England, who was an important
figure in the days just preceding and just following the War
of 1812. Many anecdotes are still current of his wise and
racy sayings. His sons inherited large fortunes and were
all of them men of mark and influence in Boston. Francis
C. Grey, the Judge's uncle, was a man of letters, a historical
investigator. He discovered the priceless Body of Liberties
of 1641, which had remained unprinted from that time, although
the source from which our Bill of Rights and constitutional
provisions had been so largely drawn.

Judge Gray's father was largely employed in manufacturing
and owned some large iron works. The son had been brought
up, I suppose, to expect that his life would be one of comfort
and ease, free from all anxieties about money, and the extent
of the labor of life would be, perhaps, to visit the counting-
room a few hours in the day to look over the books and see
generally that his affairs were properly conducted by his
agents and subordinates. He had visited Europe more than
once, and was abroad shortly after his graduation when the
news reached him that the companies in which his father's
fortune was invested had failed. He at once hurried home
and set himself resolutely to work to take care of himself.
He was an accomplished naturalist for his age and time, and
had a considerable library of works on natural history. He
exchanged them for law-books and entered the Law School. I
was splitting wood to make my own fire one autumn morning
when my door, which was ajar, was pushed open, and I saw a
face somewhere up in the neighborhood of the transom. It
was Gray, who had come to inquire what it was all about. He
had little knowledge of the rules or fashions of the Law School.
I told him about the scheme of instruction and the hours of
lectures, and so forth. We became fast friends, a friendship
maintained to his death. He at once manifested a very vigorous
intellect and a memory, not only for legal principles, but for
the names of cases, which I suppose had been cultivated by
his studies in natural history and learning the scientific
names of birds and plants. At any rate, he became one of
the best pupils in the Law School. He afterward studied
la