completed his education, his father abandoned the
profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young Brady entered his
office as office-boy and student, it being his desire to become an
advocate. He was bright, quick-witted, and remarkably apt in his
studies. His buoyant spirits and ready repartee often led him into
encounters with his elders, who were generally forced to confess that
his tongue was too much for them. His father encouraged him to form his
own opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his error.
He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon acquired such
proficiency in the management of the details of the office business that
every thing which did not absolutely need his father's personal
attention was left to him.

Although fond of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and joyfulness
of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the pleasures he relished
so much. He was a hard and faithful student, allowing nothing to draw
him from his books when he meant to devote himself to them. He read not
only law, but history, poetry, biography, romance, in short, every thing
that could store his mind with useful knowledge or add to its natural
graces. He slept at the office, and often sat up the entire night
engaged in study. Abbott speaks as follows of the early studies of
Napoleon II., and it requires no straining of language or ideas to
apply his remarks to this portion of the life of James T. Brady: "So
great was his ardor for intellectual improvement that he considered
every day as lost in which he had not made perceptible progress in
knowledge. By this rigid mental discipline he acquired that wonderful
power of concentration by which he was ever enabled to simplify subjects
the most difficult and complicated." Mr. Brady, senior, was very proud
of the energy and talent displayed by his son, and when the latter was
nineteen years old the father said to a friend who had been speaking to
him of the promise of the boy: "Yes, sir; he is a boy of great promise,
a boy of splendid intellect and noble character. Young as he is, I
regard him as a walking encyclopoedia; his mind seems to gild every
subject it touches."

In the year 1835, when but twenty years old, Mr. Brady was admitted to
the bar. "There were giants in those days" at the New York bar, and the
young man was now entering an arena in which his powers were to be
tested to the utmost. His native eloquence was well known to his