Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/203

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The Green Bag.

only too true, but she was wrong as to her place of sepulture. Her murdered remains lie far away from the vaults of the Chateau

Praslin; they are entombed near those of her mother, at Oltnetta, the residence of the Sebastianis, in Corsica.

THE IDEAL LAWYER. By Theodore W. Dwight. From an Address delivered before the Graduating Class of the Columbia Law School, June, 1889. tation which he has spent toilsome years to WHO is the ideal lawyer? In ascer taining this, we cannot separate him win. Ah! it is a noble thing to be a great from his functions. He is to study, to think, lawyer who, like a great musician, never and to do. He is both a man of the closet utters a false note, or like a great actor, and a man of action. He masters principles, who never makes/ a false gesture, or like a and he wins verdicts. He spends his nights great dancer, who never makes a false step. with old Lord Coke, who has been dead al It is an easy thing to make a moderate law most these three hundred years, and is still yer; it is a simple thing to make constant wonderfully alive; and in the morning he blunders which disturb the inner gravity of a sound-minded judge, who strives to give untangles, before an expectant jury, the mys teries of some recent murder, or perhaps no outward sign of his hidden well-spring of mirth. It is an uncanny thing to play tricks unravels the winding threads of some com with the judge and jury; for by and by will plicated fraud. At one time he is all con templation; at another, he is all action. He come the avalanche, and then where will the never supplies the contrast imagined by trickster be? Dante, between Leah and Rachel, daughters The ideal lawyer is also a true man. of the patriarch Jacob, — the one gathering flowers in the garden of Paradise to give Nothing is of more value to him than a high pleasure to others, and the other dreamily and honorable character, strengthened and searching in a mirror the excellences of the purified by the struggles, trials, and disci pline of life. The great inquiry for us all reflection from her own eyes. On the other hand, what the good lawyer is, How shall we develop ourselves, and use thinks, that also he does. Above all, he is our development best in aiding our fellows? honest, — honest towards himself, for he never Self-culture is an excellent thing; but its over-estimates his powers; honest towards crowning excellence is as an instrument of his client, for he never encourages him with i good. When self-centred it has its enjoy false hopes, knowing that if he does, the ments, but they are fleeting; while those sure harvest will be bitter disappointment, which are derived from service rendered to bursting out at length into hot indignation; others are permanent and undying. honest towards the judge, whom he never There is no finer object of contemplation misleads by a false statement, or a miscita- among men than an aged jurist, full of hon tion or quotation of an authority; honest, ors, who having rounded up the measure of emphatically, towards the jury, whose confi his active years, receives the tributes of his dence he sincerely strives to win. The result fellows for his earnest spirit of work, the is, that he is never short-sighted. He never breadth and solidity of his judgment, the for a temporary advantage sacrifices a repu worth of his transparent character.