Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/226

178 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS martial cast, and as an officer in a company of col lege students he enthusiastically devoted himself to the study of military tactics. This is one reason why he found himself at the foot of his class at the end of two years in college. Stung by a sense of disgrace, he devoted the two remaining years to hard study, and when he was graduated in 1824 he was third in his class. While in college, like many other eminent Americans, he taught in win ter. After taking his degree he began the study of law at Portsmouth, in the office of Levi Wood- bury, where he remained about a year. He after ward spent two years in the law-school at North ampton, Mass., and in the office of Judge Edmund Parker at Amherst, N. H. In 1827 he was ad mitted to the bar and began practice in his native town. Soon afterward he argued his first jury cause in the court-house at Amherst. This effort (as is often the case with eminent orators) was a failure. But he was not despondent. He replied to the sympathetic expressions of a friend: "I will try nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, if clients continue to trust me, and if I fail just as I have to-day, I will try the thousandth. I shall live to argue cases in this court-house in a manner that will mortify neither myself nor my friends." With his popular qualities it was inevitable that he should take a prominent part in the sharp politi cal contests of his native state. He espoused the