for the purpose of correcting any error which may have escaped his notice in examining the original proof. Finally the plates are cast and the pages appear in their last form. Even then keen scrutiny is required and errors are sometimes detected which necessitate changes in the plates. The labor is not all done; the index and the tables are yet to be prepared. Of course, it is understood that while the printed volumes become the law, the original opinions are all preserved. As the opinions are sent in, visitors ap pear. The leading members of the bar rarely honor the office with their presence. Less eminent advocates are often in evidence. Not infrequently the question would be asked in my day, "Have any rescripts come down?" My answer generally was, "You mean opin ions, not rescripts," the difference not being definitely fixed in the mind of the average lawyer. Sometimes the inquiry would be, "Has that opinion come down yet?" as if the case were the only one that needed attention. It was amusing to listen to an occasional character, who, rescript in hand, would rush into the office to see the opinion in the first case he had "taken up" for a dozen years, or perhaps, the first case he had ever "taken up" in his life. He would read the adverse judg ment with a weary expression and lay it down with the gratuitous remark that he re gretted that the Massachusetts Supreme Bench had so deteriorated. During the eight years and a half of the writer's incumbency many important cases were decided. The judgment in Hancock National Bank v. Ellis, 164 Mass. 414, as to the liability of the stockholder of a cor poration organized in another State and the subsequent confirmations and enlarge ments created a profound impression. "I don't know what to make of it," said a well-known lawyer. "I have always advised my clients just exactly opposite." In an other case, Andrews v. Andrews, 176 Mass. 92, as to the validity of a divorce obtained in
another State, there was an equal interest. My assistant, who preceded me in the office by five years, was wont to say that during her entire employment these two cases at tracted by all means the most attention and were called for the most frequently. A very serviceable practice—with which the Reporter's office has some slight connec tion—is that of the Social Law Library in gathering together in ponderous books the original papers of all the cases. This began with the 97th volume and has been continued with a success that no one will question. Xot only have the lawyers an accessible reposi tory of forms and established methods of procedure, but the judges are supplied with an easy source of verification and a means of supplementing the deficiencies of the Re porter, as is evidenced occasionally by the statement, "An examination of the original papers reveals the fact, etc." Though much may be said as to the most advisable method of reporting, I shall say but little. Conscious of my own deficiencies and cherishing a grateful remembrance of the for bearance of the bar, I have only to say that it is often difficult to keep the happy mean be tween diffuseness and conciseness, nor is it always easy to crystallize the points adjudi cated in brief and expressive head-notes. The writer has long been of opinion that the judges should state all the facts in the opin ions and should write all the head-not; s, thus reducing the duties of the Reporter to those of a clerical nature. But others think differ ently, for example, a writer in 27 American Lain Reporter, 86, who declares, "It may be gravely doubted whether the practice of re quiring judges to make head-notes of their own opinions results in securing as good a syllabus as could be drawn by a competent Reporter. The head-notes of the decisions of some of the former judges of the Supreme Court of the United States who were in the habit of making their own head-notes were notoriously bad. They made an abstract of
