Vol. XI.
No. 6.
BOSTON.
June, 1899.
THE LATE MR. JUSTICE FIELD. By Arch1bald Hopk1ns.
THE average impression of the judicial brought up as they were, owed their success career doubtless is, that whatever may not altogether, as is often assumed, to their be its attractions and rewards, it is on the inherited qualities, and the education they whole a very humdrum and monotonous received, but to the circumstance that from one, dealing chiefly with dusty maxims, dry early childhood the constant lesson of their lives was self-reliance, and that they knew precedents, and the adjustment of contro versies in no respect different from thousands and accepted with cheerfulness and courage that have gone before. Under the prevail the fact that they must from the first make ing conditions of civilized society, and in their own way. Stephen was a delicate most communities, the correctness of this child, but very early showed marked intel view may be admitted, but in the case of lectual capacity and quickness, and when Mr. Justice Field of the United States Su he was thirteen years old his sister, Emilia, preme Court, recently deceased, it certainly having married Rev. Josiah Brewer with the does not hold good. No attempt to account purpose of accompanying him to Syria, for him or to understand him would avail there to establish schools, it was thought best to take the boy along, with the idea of much, without some knowledge of his an cestry and early life. Zachariah Field was his learning the Oriental languages, having one of the first Puritan settlers of New in view a professorship for him in the future. England, and the independence of character He remained in the East three years, learned which brought him there was developed and to speak modern Greek, and acquired a increased in his descendants by the hard good knowledge of Italian, French and struggle required to subjugate the wilder Turkish. During the same period he trav ness and drive out the savages. His grand eled through Asia Minor and Greece. Con fathers on both sides bore commissions in tact with Mohammedans, Greeks and Roman the Revolutionary war, and his father, the Catholics greatly broadened his views, and Rev. David Dudley Field, soon after Stephen led him to think favorably of the Turks, and was born, November 4, 18 16, moved from he had the trying experience of passing Haddam, Ct., to take charge of the Congre through two epidemics, one of plague and gational church in Stockbridge, Mass., of the other of cholera, in which he was of which Jonathan Edwards had been the pas great service to the suffering. All this time tor, and between whom and himself there he had been fitting himself for college, and had been but one incumbent. There, on a returning to the United States, entered salary of $600 a year, Dr. Field supported Williams College in the fall of 1833. For a large family, well-known members of which his alma mater he always expressed great were in addition to Stephen, David Dudley, affection, and for her president, Dr. Hop Cyrus W. and Henry M. Field. Boys kins, a profound reverence. He graduated
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