had a great practice in Maine, and made some good arguments
in the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Story was
succeeded by Chief Justice Joel Parker of New Hampshire, a
very eminent jurist, who was saturated with the old learning
of special pleading and real property. He would have been
a fit associate for Coke or Saunders, and would have held
his own anywhere with either.

There was nothing in the teaching of Latin or Greek to inspire
the student with any love of Greek or Latin literature. The
professor never pointed out its beauties or illustrated the
text in any way. The students, in succession, were called
upon to construe a few lines, reading one or two Greek words
and then giving their English equivalents. The time of the
good scholar was taken up in hearing the recitation of the
poor scholar and so very largely wasted. I had four or five
persons in my class who became afterward eminent classical
scholars. I do not believe that when we graduated there were
more than four men in the class who could write a decent Latin
sentence without the laborious use of grammar and dictionary.
I doubt whether there was more than one, certainly there were
not more than three, who could do the same thing in Greek.
I do not suppose there was a man in the class who could have
spoken either language with ease.

Yet, somehow, the graduates of Harvard got a good intellectual
training from the University. The rough country boy, if he
had it in him, came out at his graduation a gentleman in behavior
and in character. He was able to take hold of life with great
vigor. The average age of graduation I suppose was twenty.
Not more than three years were spent in studying a profession.
In some few cases, the graduate got a little money by teaching
for a year. But the graduates of Harvard College and Harvard
Law School were apt to take quite rapidly the high places
of the profession. That was true then much more than it is
now.

There were many persons who graduated before my time or shortly
afterward whose high place in the public life of the Commonwealth
and of the country was assured before they were thirty years
old. Edward Everett was called to the pulpit of Brattle Street
Church at the age of nineteen. He succeeded in that pulpit
Joseph Stevens Buckminster, who was himself settled over that
important parish at the age of twenty-one and was a wonderful
pulpit orator. Edward Everett preached a sermon when he