ADMITTED.
At the September term of the Supreme Court, Mr. Ranney presented the
certificates and applications for the admission of Case, Ransom,
and Bart on the first day, and they were, as usual, referred to a
Committee of the whole bar, for examination and report.
The Committee met that evening in the Court room, the Supreme Judges,
Wood and Lane, being present.
Old Webb, of Warren, whom Case ought to have sketched in his rough
outlines as the senior of the bar, turned suddenly to Bart, the
youngest of the applicants, and asked him if a certain "estate could
exist in Ohio?"
After a moment's reflection, Bart answered that it could not.
"Why?"
Bart explained the nature and conditions of the estate, and said that
one of them was rendered impossible by a statute; and explained how.
A good deal of surprise was expressed at this; the statute was called
for, and on its being placed in his hands, Bart turned to it, read the
law, and showed its application.
Wood said, "Judge Lane, I think this young man has decided your
Hamilton Co. case for you."
Some general conversation ensued, and when it subsided, old Webb
said, "Well! well! young man, we may as well go home, when we get such
things from a law student." And they did not ask him another question.
The examination was over at last. Case had acquitted himself well,
and Ransom tolerably. Bart was mortified and disgusted. This was the
extent then of the ordeal; all his labor, hard study, and anxiety,
ended in this!
The next morning, on the assembling of the Court, the three young men
were admitted, sworn in, and became attorneys and counsellors at law,
and solicitors in chancery, authorized to practise in all the courts
of Ohio. All this was made to appear by the clerk's certificate, under
the great seal of the Supreme Court of the State, tied with a blue
ribbon, and presented to each of them.
It tended not much to relieve Bart, to know that the question he had
so summarily disposed of had much excited and disturbed the legal
world of Middle and Southern Ohio; that the best legal minds had been
divided on it; and that a case had just been reserved for the court in
bane, which turned on this very point.
It was over; he had his diploma, but he felt that in some way it was a
swindle.
What a longing came to him to go to Newbury; and he was half mad and
wholly sad to think that one face would come to him with the sweet,
submissive, reproachful, arch expression, it wore when he forbid its
owner to speak, one memorable morning, in the woods and snow; and he
found himself wondering if what Ida told him might by any possibility
be true; he knew it could not be, and so put it all away.
He took Ida over to Mr. Windsor's for a long day's visit, made a few
calls, packed his trunk, bade Miss Giddings, who did not hesitate to
express her sorrow at his departure, a regretful good-bye, and the
next morning rode to Ashtabula, and there took a steamer down the
lake.
I am glad to have him off my hands for six months; and when he falls
under them next time, seriously, I will dispose of him.