"In describing his first official visit to the Law School, late in 1869,
President Eliot speaks of knocking at the door of Washburn's room and,
entering, received the usual salutation of the ever-genial Governor
Washburn. 'Oh, how are you? Take a chair,' this without looking at me at
all. When he saw who it was, he held up both his hands with his favorite
gesture and said, 'I declare, I never before saw a President of Harvard
College in this building. Then and there I took a lesson from one of the
kindest and most sympathetic of teachers.'"
There is, however, historical proof that on at least one prior occasion
a President of Harvard was in Dane Hall. John Quincy Adams one day
mounted his horse at Quincy and rode over to Cambridge to see President
Quincy, who greeted him and pretty soon suggested that they call on
Judge Story in his lecture room. The two distinguished visitors were
gladly welcomed and were installed by Judge Story, one on each side of
him, and he, at their request, proceeded with his lecture. Both of these
eminent gentlemen were Stoics. President Quincy went through the New
England winters without wearing an overcoat, and Mr. Adams, when at
Washington, used to swim in the Potomac and light his own fire in winter
and, I believe, read a chapter of the Old Testament and a chapter of the
New Testament and wrote in what Henry Clay (who had been tripped up by
Mr. Adams on some question of fact) called "that infernal diary of his
in which he has put down everything that has happened since the adoption
of the Federal Constitution"; and all this before breakfast. As Judge
Story proceeded with the rapid and even flow of his lecture, he became
aware of a smile upon the faces of his class. A quick glance to either
side of him explained it, and, with a cautionary gesture and in a
confidential tone, he said: "Young gentlemen, you see before you two
melancholy examples of the evil effect of early rising. Always remember
that it is of a great deal more importance to be awake after you are up,
than simply to get up early."
There is another story which does not relate to the Law School, but
which I will venture to tell, both as a picture of early Cambridge
days, and as a manifestation of Harvard scholarship under adverse
circumstances. There was then no Harvard Bridge and no horse-car line,
and, when the culture of Cambridge went to Boston to hear Emerson
lecture in the winter evening, the best available vehicle was a large,
open, four-horse sleigh, owned and driven by a liveryman named Morse. On
one such evening the lecture was over, and the return trip was on and so
was a fine, powdery snowstorm. The sleigh proceeded across the Cambridge
bridge and then through East Cambridge and so to Cambridge, stopping now
on one side of a street to discharge passengers at a small house, and
now on the other side at a big house, and so on, and the fine snow kept
sifting down and Morse, perched high up in front, was growing more and
more ghostly, when out from the sleigh rose the voice of James Russell
Lowell, intoning a fragment from Horace, adapted so as to embrace the
charioteer of the sleigh:
"_Pallida Mors[e] pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres_,"
which Conington translates:
"Pale Death, impartial, walks his round; he knocks at
cottage-gate And palace portal."
I have found both pleasure and profit in reviewing these associations,
especially the memories of our wise and friendly teachers, and of
fellow-students who were soon to be entrusted with the grave interests,
the sacred issues of life, liberty and property. As experience and
observation widen, one realizes how thin is the crust which separates
civilized society from the elemental fires below, and comes more and
more to value influences which preserve and institutions which
stabilize. Such an influence, such an institution is the Harvard Law
School. Such an influence, such an institution is the Brotherhood of the
Bar, indissoluble save by death or dishonor.
[_To be Continued_]