ng students carried that, in
Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, we find New York lawyers alarmed "by the
awful influx of young Barristers upon this Province." So steps were taken
to make all attorneys agree not to have more than two apprentices in their
office at one time. About the same time the Boston newspaper, called the
"Centinel," shows there was a similar state of overproduction in Boston.
Only the trouble there was principally with the doctors, for doctors were
then turned loose in the same way, carrying a diploma from the old
physician with whom they had matriculated and duly graduated.

Law schools and medical colleges, be it known, are comparatively modern
institutions--not quite so new, however, as business colleges, but pretty
nearly so. And now in Chicago there is a "Barbers' University," which
issues diplomas to men who can manipulate a razor and shears, whereas,
until yesterday, boys learned to be barbers by working in a barber's shop.
The good old way was to pass a profession along from man to man.

And it is so yet in a degree, for no man is allowed to practise either
medicine or law until he has spent some time in the office of a
practitioner in good standing.

In the Catholic Church, and also in the Episcopal, the novitiate is
expected to serve for a time under an older clergyman; but all the other
denominations have broken away, and now spring the fledgling on the world
straight from the factory.

Several other of his children having sorely disappointed him, Peter Jay
seemed to center his ambitions on his boy John. So we find him paying
Benjamin Kissam, the eminent lawyer, two hundred pounds in good coin of
the Colony to take John Jay as a 'prentice for five years. John went at it
and began copying those endless, wordy documents in which the old-time
attorney used to delight. John sat at one end of a table, and at the other
was seated one Lindley Murray, at the mention of whose name terror used to
seize my soul.

Murray has written some good, presentable English to the effect that young
Jay, even at that time, had the inclination and ability to focus his mind
upon the subject in hand. "He used to work just as steadily when his
employer was away as when he was in the office," a fact which the
grammarian seemed to regard as rather strange.

In a year we find that when Mr. Kissam went away he left the keys of the
safe in John Jay's hands, with orders what to do in case of emergencies.
Thus does respo