e illustrious judge, prepared by his son, were
welcome to our Christmas-holiday leisure.

Joseph Story was the eldest of eleven children, and lived to be indeed the
"Joseph" of mark and renown to his father and brothers. He was born in
Marblehead, September 18th, 1779. His father was a physician, and served
during a portion of the Revolution as army surgeon. He died when the
future judge was twenty-six years of age: yet what the son then was is
best told by one sentence from the father's will--after making his wife
sole executrix, he recommends her to his son Joseph, adding, "and although
this perhaps is needless, I do it to mark my special confidence in his
affections, skill, and abilities." From the father, our lawyer thus
panegyrized received friendly geniality and broad understanding; from the
mother, indomitable will, vigor and enthusiasm.

Habit of observation and desire of knowledge were the prominent attributes
of his childish character; nevertheless he was ardent in all the sports of
boyhood. To the last he maintained a regard for his honor, which induced
him while yet a lad, and under promise not to divulge the name of a
schoolmate offender, to receive a severe flogging rather than to yield up
his knowledge upon the subject. At the age of sixteen, in the midst of a
Freshman term at Harvard College, he thought of matriculation; but upon
inquiry learned that he must not only be examined upon the works of
ordinary preparatory reading, but that it was necessary for him to expect
a call upon the volumes which his class had dispatched during the past
half year. At first he was daunted, but remembering there yet remained six
weeks of vacation, he addressed himself to the necessary labor--the
severity of which is best evidenced by the fact that in the short time
above mentioned he read Sallust, the odes of Horace, two books of Livy,
three books of the Anabasis, two books of the Iliad, and certain English
treatises. This sounds like the railroad instruction now much in vogue;
but its effects were permanent in value upon his mind. Few readers of his
works will accuse him of a want of proficiency in Latin! But the _often_
reading--the _saepe legendo_ was ever his habit: for he remembered the
couplet:

Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo
Sic homo fit doctus non vi sed saepe legendo.

He passed muster with the college tutors in January, 1795. Among his
classmates were the (afterwards Reverends) Dr. Tuckerma