nisi prius practice of the students or for their views upon a stated controversy — generally patterned from some case in his circuit — Professor Story was the embodiment of gen iality and seemed as pleased with the pro ceedings as would be a child at blindman's buff. His constant tenet to students was " the nobility and attractiveness of the legal pro fession." As matter of personal pride, I fancy he was prouder of his professorship than of hisjudgcshiporauthorship. Three decades of his law students all over the Union derived from Story unfeigned delight in the practice of their profession. He had served thirty-four years as judge — equal with Marshall's service and the longest of any other Supreme Court judge : two more than that of McLean and Wayne and six more than that of Taney, Curtis and Miller — when at the age of sixty-six Story's physical constitution gave way; but he died in harness, as Charles Sumner, of whose pupil age Story had been very proud, narrated in a sketch of his old preceptor and neighbor for the " North American Review." Sumner
had seen him, two days before the mortal attack, returning from the lecture room, with feeble step, across the college campus, and had exchanged what proved to be farewell salutations. In truth, Story faded into the next world rather than died out of this. He may be described as a man who lived forty years without knowing a moment of what the world calls leisure. He died, as he had lived, a zealous exponent of the Unitarian faith and an ardent practitioner of the beatitudes of the Christ-man. His death and that of Henry Baldwin brought to their vacant chairs Levi Woodbury and Samuel Nelson; but the Story judicial and legal influence has never left his old court. Doubtless, if the profession were polled to vote who was the greatest American lawyer and jurist, an immense majority would decide for Joseph Story. There was more than pleasantry in this toast, once drunk at a ban quet of lawyers whereat the great jurist and instructor was a guest: "However high in the temple of Themis a lawyer may seek to climb he will never get above one story."
WILLS OF FAMOUS AMERICANS. THERE is a remarkable collection of old the most famous of all the documents. It was wills in the city hall vault of the District recently copied by the order of the registrar of Columbia. One only needs to enter the into a record book where it could be con vault with the registrar, says the " Washing sulted with facility. The original is some ton Post," to realize what a wealth of his where in Virginia, but Washington had some toric manuscripts and of quaint forgotten property interests in the capital city, and a eccentricities it contains. There was a pro copy was deposited with the authorities here. vision in the early law by which the wills, It is a mammoth document, and probably once deposited, could not be withdrawn, so covers more writing paper than any other that the registrar has in his keeping all the will among the archives. It is spread upon legal instruments of this character since the eight broad pages, and it would require at year 1800. Many men known to history and least two solid pages of a daily paper on identified with the development of the nation which to print it. While the earthly posses have lived and owned property in Washing sions of the father of his country, though he ton, and their wills or exact copies thereof was one of the richest Americans of his time, repose in the great iron receptacles. were by no means as extensive as those of The will of George Washington is, perhaps, many modern millionaires, he prescribed
