[169] the labor. I think in a few minutes, with the volumes before me, I can give you some hints which your own knowledge and experience, I doubt not, will improve upon, but which will launch you in your labor. Do not be distrustful; faint heart never won success in law more than in love. You are abundantly competent to the task, believe me, from my knowledge of you and of the labor. Mr. Choate beckons you to come up. He wished me to say that we had conferred together since he had sealed his letter, and that we agreed in all the premises, and also in the feasibility of your commencing the duty in Salem. Of course you must read the volume, and observe all the cases which would illustrate it, that have been decided in our State courts since its date. Don't regard the money as the pay. It is the knowledge you will get,— the stimulus under which your mind will act when you feel that you are reading law for a purpose and an end other than the bare getting of information,—every spur and ambition exciting you; depend upon it, no engraver will trace the law on your mind in such deep characters. Abandon pro tern. all other legal studies, and enfold yourself, like the silk-worm, in your own web. If I augur right, the six weeks, in which I think you will accomplish it, will be the most productive of your whole life. In them you will feel more palpably your progress than ever before in the same amount of time. Your extempore readiness to undertake the labor reminds me of Ledyard, the traveller, who was asked when he should be willing to start to explore the interior of Africa; he replied, ‘To-morrow.’ I shall probably be, on Tuesday forenoon next, in Judge Story's court. Pardon the haste in which I write, and believe me Most truly yours,
To Charles S. Daveis, Portland.
Boston, July 22, 1835.my dear Sir,—Judge Story has told me several times that I must endeavor to obtain from you the sight of a letter which you have received within a few months from Dr. Haggard,1 of Doctors' Commons. . . . Judge Story's ‘Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence’ have gone to press. He thinks more highly of them than of either of his former works. I think that they will establish a new epoch in the study of chancery in our country. How much more of an honor to the office than to Judge Story would it be, were he made Chief-Justice of the United States!2 Indeed, posterity will notice his absence from that elevation more than they would his presence there, as the Roman people observed the absence of the favorite statues of Brutus and Cassius in the imperial procession more than they
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1 John Haggard, reporter of cases in the Consistory Court, and also in the Admiralty.
2 Chief-Justice Marshall, who was appointed by President John Adams in 1801, died July 6, 1835, and was succeeded by Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, who held the office till his death, in 1864.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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