Harvard memorial biographies ...

164

Harvard Memorial Biografpies.

law, which he had already chosen as his profession. He read
in the elementary text-books for a while at home. Then for
about a year and a half he continued his studies with the writer
at his office in Boston, until the fall of 1860, when he entered
the Law School at Cambridge, and remained there until he
had determined to join the Army of the Union.
Though born in the city, and for some years attending Boston
schools, his life was mainly passed in the country, or within
easy access to those opportunities of rural sport which an enterprising, spirited boy is always eager to improve. The woods,
hills, and pastures of Nonantum, West Roxbury, and Longwood, the waters of Jamaica Pond, Charles River, and Boston
Harbor, gave ample scope for a love, which in him was very
strong, for adventurous excursions and all vigorous exercises.
He could row a boat, ride a horse, throw a ball, skate, swim,
and climb with the best of his fellows. His constitution was
vigorous, his health perfect, his spirits exuberant, his nature
generous, his tastes cultivated. He never greatly taxed himself in school or college studies. His intellect was the ready
servant of a stout, warm heart, that quickly responded to actual
human interests, but worked reluctantly at tasks which did not
bear directly on the purposes of life. Real interests and an
actual purpose he found, however, in his chosen profession.
His attendance "at the office was unbroken in its regularity.
In all its business he took an interest as personal as if it were
his own. He carefully observed the progress of cases, sought
out the reasons of different modes of procedure, and manifested an intelligent and active curiosity. At the same time he
pursued his course of professional reading, through even the
driest, most technical, and difficult parts of it, with steady,
cheerful, and effective industry, and made rapid progress. He
did not confine himself to studies purely professional, but gave
his spare hours at home, as he had not before, to reading of a
general and instructive character. Here, too, the practical bias
of his mind asserted itself. He read history, biography, travels,
and politics, but not the poets, philosophers, and religionists.
In the political canvass that immediately preceded the