James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist | Page 6

not greatly distinguish
himself as a student. His passion for literature was marked, and he
became conspicuous for his forensic abilities. Towards the end of his
course, his character as a student was intensified, and he was not often
seen away from his books. Out of term time, he would return to his
father's home taking his books with him. At such times he was rarely
seen by his former companions of Barnstable, because of his habit of
secluding himself for study.
It is narrated that at this period of his life, young Otis gave strong
evidence of the excitable temperament with which he was endowed. In
the intervals of his study his nervous system, under the stimulus of
games or controversial dispute, would become so tense with excitement
as to provoke remark. Nor may we in the retrospect fail to discover in
this quality of mind and temper the premonitions of that malady which
finally prevailed over the lucid understanding, and rational activities of
James Otis.
The youth did not much effect social accomplishments. He had a
passion for music and learned to play the violin. With this instrument
he was wont to entertain himself in the intervals of study. Sometimes
he would play for company. It was one of his habits to break off
suddenly and rather capriciously in the midst of what he was doing.
Thus did he with his music. It is narrated that on a certain occasion
while playing by invitation for some friends, he suddenly put aside the
instrument, saying in a sort of declamatory manner as was his wont--
"So fiddled Orpheus and so danced the brutes."
He then ran into the garden, and could not be induced to play the violin
again.
Young Otis passed through the regular classes at Harvard and was
graduated in 1743. On that occasion he took part in a disputation which
was one of the exercises of his class. Otherwise his record at the
college is not accented with any special work which he did. At the time
of his graduation he was in his nineteenth year. It had been his father's
purpose and his own that his profession should be the law. It does not
appear, however, that his college studies were especially directed to
this end. At any rate, he did not devote himself at once to the law, but
assiduously for two years (1743-45) to a general course of study chosen
and directed by himself with a view to the further discipline of his mind

and the widening of his information. It was an educational theory with
Otis that such an interval of personal and spontaneous application
should intervene between a young man's graduation and the beginning
of his professional career. Having pursued this course with himself he
insisted that his younger brother, Samuel Alleyne Otis, should take the
same course. In one of his letters to his father--a communication
fortunately rescued from the holocaust of his correspondence--he
discusses the question and urges the propriety of the young man's
devoting a year or two to general study before taking up his law books.
An extract from the letter will prove of interest. The writer says: "It is
with sincerest pleasure I find my brother Samuel has well employed his
time during his residence at home. I am sure you don't think the time
long he is spending in his present course of studies; since it is past all
doubt they are not only ornamental and useful, but indispensably
necessary preparatories for the figure I hope one day, for his and your
sake, as well as my own, to see him make in the profession he is
determined to pursue. I am sure the year and a half I spent in the same
way, after leaving the academy, was as well spent as any part of my life;
and I shall always lament I did not take a year or two further for more
general inquiries in the arts and sciences, before I sat down to the
laborious study of the laws of my country.
"My brother's judgment can't at present be supposed to be ripe enough
for so severe an exercise as the proper reading and well digesting the
common law. Very sure I am, if he would stay a year or two from the
time of his degree, before he begins with the law, he will be able to
make better progress in one week, than he could now, without a miracle,
in six. Early and short clerkships, and a premature rushing into practice,
without a competent knowledge in the theory of law, have blasted the
hopes, and ruined the expectations, formed by the parents of most of
the students in the profession, who have fallen within my observation
for these ten or fifteen