Recollections of a Retired Lawyer

Recollections Introductory

I brought away from the practice of my profession nearly the full measure of reverence for it, with which I commenced the study at nineteen. And that measure exceeded even the reverence attributed to honest Dandie Dinmont; of whom it is written, that in his heart, next to his own landlord, he honored a lawyer in high practice. Not one of my teachers—neither he who carried me, cyphering, through the Rule of Three, nor any of those who taught me Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, —no, nor our neighborhood preacher himself—ever half so filled my soul with idolatrous emotions, as a certain eminent barrister did, who sometimes, in going to or from one of his courts, called to spend a night or a day at my father’s house. In conversation he was capital: fluent, copious, and lively; full of anecdote, drawn from both life and books; duly fond of fighting his forensic battles o’er again; and in the opinion, as well of my father (who was no bad judge) as of all our public, —one among the truest of men, and safest of counsellors. At the bar, he ruled juries, and some courts, with absolute sway, by his ingenuity, eloquence, and reputation for knowledge and honesty; insomuch, that (as was said of a great Edinburg advocate) any litigant thereabouts would have deemed it “a mere tempting of Providence to omit retaining” John Mason. With talents which, had he been ambitious would have raised him to what dignity he pleased, —the more readily, as his political opinions were of the popular cast—he never sought office, and therefore never held it; for the days of Regulus and Cincinnatus, when consular robes went to seek retiring merit, have not been our days. When solicited to stand as a candidate for Congress, he constantly shrunk back, appalled at the obloquy sure to bedaub public… Read More