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The Green Bag.

one of his most pathetic utterances is found and all that I shall presume very briefly to in a letter to his son at school : " I hope that suggest, is what this statue will mean to the you are well and studious, and among the coming generations of lawyers and citizens. And first, and far above his splendid tal best scholars. If this is so, I am willing you should play every day till the blood is ents and his triumphant eloquence, I would ready to burst from your cheeks. Love the place the character of the man, pure, honest, studies that will make you wise, useful and delivered absolutely from all the temptations happy when there shall be no blood at all of sordid and mercenary things, aspiring to be seen in your cheeks or lips." He daily to what was higher and better, loathing never rested from his delightful labors — and all that was vulgar and of low repute, simple that is the pity of it — he took no vacations. as a child, and tender and sympathetic Except for one short trip to Europe, when as a woman. Emerson most truly says that warned of a possible break-down in 1850, character is far above intellect, and this an occasional day at Essex, a three days' man's character surpassed even his exalted journey to the White Mountains was all that intellect, and, controlling all his great endow he allowed himself. Returning from such ments, made the consummate beauty of his an outing in the summer of 1854, on which life. I know of no greater tribute ever paid it was my great privilege to accompany him, to a successful lawyer, than that which he he said : " That is my entire holiday for this received from Chief Justice Shaw, himself an year." So that when he told Judge Warren august and serene personality, absolutely so playfully that " The lawyer's vacation familiar with his daily walk and conversation, is the space between the question put to a in his account of the effort that was made witness and his answer," it was of himself to induce Mr. Choate to give up his active almost literally true. Would that he had and exhausting practice, and to take the place of professor in the Harvard Law realized his constant dream of an ideal cot tage in the old walnut grove in Essex, where School, made vacant by the death of Mr. he might spend whole summers with his Justice Story, an effort of which the Chief Justice, as a member of the corporation of books, his children and his thoughts. His splendid and blazing intellect, fed and Harvard, was the principal promoter. After enriched by constant study of the best referring to him then, in 1847, as "the thoughts of the great minds of the race, his leader of the Bar in every department of all-persuasive eloquence, his teeming and forensic eloquence," and dwelling upon the radiant imagination, whirling his hearers great advantages which would accrue to the along with it, and sometimes overpowering school from the profound legal learning himself, his brilliant and sportive fancy, which he possessed, he said : " In the case lighting up the most arid subjects with the of Mr. Choate, it was considered quite in glow of sunrise, his prodigious and never- dispensable that he should reside in Cam failing memory, and his playful wit, always bridge, on account of the influence which bursting forth with irresistible impulse, have his genial manners, his habitual presence, been the subject of scores of essays and and the force of his character, would be likely criticisms, all struggling with the vain effort to exert over the young men, drawn from to describe and crystallize the fascinating every part of the United States to listen to and magical charm of his speech and his his instructions." influence. What richer tribute could there be to per But the occasion and the place remind sonal and professional worth, than such me that here to-day we have chiefly to do words from such lips? He was the fit man with him as the lawyer and the advocate, to mold the characters of the youth, not of