The Young Lawyer. vened, prepared, and presented appropriate resolutions. Addresses were delivered by Benjamin F. Butler, Daniel Lord, and Hugh Maxwell. As this article is not a study, but a biographical sketch, a critical apprecia tion of Chancellor Kent's services to his State and Nation, or of his unimpeachable character is not called for here. His life tells its own worth. And Ogden Hoffman
was right when he said, " His eulogy."
165 name is
[This brief and inadequate sketch is compiled chiefly from Chancellor Kent's correspondence, including a long letter to Thomas Washington, dated May I, 1799, Mem oranda of his Life, and contemporaneous records. For the use of these abundant materials, I am indebted to the kind ness of the representatives of the Chancellor's family, and especially to William Kent and Edwin C. Kent, for their unfailing courtesy and willing aid. — C. S. M.]
THE YOUNG LAWYER. By John Wavland Peddie. IT is said, " Necessity knows no law." Therein, perhaps, is the young lawyer a necessity. Anyhow, the average commun ity thinks him a necessity, and tolerates him for that flattering reason. They condone his existence in the hope that by a fruitful future he may retrieve a barren past. They scarcely realize that somewhere be tween the disheveled locks and cadaverous cheeks of the youthful lawyer there already lurks some legal lore timidly waiting devel opment. A child does not — unless, per haps, a Bostonian — read Browning for his first lesson. No, he must, before anything else, peruse the numerous soliloquies written upon the " horse," " rat," " cat," and other monosyllabic subjects that have crept into our primers. After he has fully compre hended that " This is a horse," and its con comitant "Is this a horse?" he may pro ceed to more complicated and perhaps interesting questions. So it is with the young lawyer. He must first learn " This is law," and its concomi tant " Is this law? " before he can fully grasp such a question as was put by an English judge to a kind but feminine witness : " My good woman," said the learned judge, " you must give an answer in the fewest possible words of which you are capable, to the plain and simple question whether, when you were
crossing the street with the baby on your arm, and the omnibus was coming down on the right side, and the cab on the left, and the brougham was trying to pass the omni bus, you saw the plaintiff between the broug ham and the cab, or whether, and when you saw him at all, and whether or not near the brougham, cab, or omnibus, or either, or any two, and which of them respectively, or how it was." No more entertaining spectacle can be witnessed than the typical young lawyer. The older men of the profession look upon him as a sort of masculine ingenue, and concoct all manner of ordeals to put him through. They forget the young lawyer does not need cremation to teach him fire burns. Their attitude towards him might approach in loco parotitis, had they a clearer recollection of their own hardships. How ever, the young lawyer is above the vale of tears, and deeds over to his old enemy re spect and admiration — confessedly reserv ing, though, a rather large defeasance clause. In the young lawyer is all that fosters ambition — pride, caution, and courage, though this trinity of parts he sometimes so unfortunately blends as to make their har mony broken. Pride he must have, for no one else admires him; caution he must have to realize this, and courage to meet it.
