GREAT MEN'S BODIES
up the prominent points of the picture. And it may here be added that this admirable simplicity of manners—nay, the very tastes and habits of his early manhood, remained with him through life. Thus he never lost his fondness for those field-sports and athletic exercises which in youth laid the foundation of that robust health which he continued to enjoy to a green old age; nor did he disdain his favorite game of quoits, even when he had been placed at the head of the federal judiciary. Even at this day the imagination can paint the tall form of the young provincial lieutenant—not as it appeared more than half a century later, in its dignified repose on the bench, robed in the judicial gown and slightly bent with the weight of years—but, animated with the enthusiasm of the soldier, erect, vigorous, and athletic, rising above those frail breastworks, and urging on thy bravest of the troops to defend their position against the assault of the enemy.… His professional reputation at this period was very high. He found himself engaged in all the leading causes in the State and national tribunals; and by a course of profound study and culture, of severe mental training and of successful practice at the bar, he gradually matured and developed those great powers which shed lustre around that higher and more honorable career on the bench upon which he was about to enter."[1] And the good education of that wiry body, as well as its native material, showed in the way it lasted through a life of incessant toil among most involved and difficult problems clear up not to seventy, but to eighty.
HAMILTON (1757–1801)
- ↑ Van Santvoord's Lives of the Chief Justices.
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