My Memories of Eighty Years | Page 7

selected, and the doctor's advice to readers was always
available. His taste ran to the English classics, and he had all the
standard authors in poetry, history, fiction, and essay.
No pleasure derived in reading in after-years gave me such delight as
the Waverley Novels. I think I read through that library and some of it
several times over.
The excitement as the novels of Dickens and Thackeray began to
appear equalled almost the enthusiasm of a political campaign. Each
one of those authors had ardent admirers and partisans. The characters
of Dickens became household companions. Every one was looking for
the counterpart of Micawber or Sam Weller, Pecksniff or David
Copperfield, and had little trouble in finding them either in the family

circle or among the neighbors.
Dickens's lectures in New York, which consisted of readings from his
novels, were an event which has rarely been duplicated for interest.
With high dramatic ability he brought out before the audience the
characters from his novels with whom all were familiar. Every one in
the crowd had an idealistic picture in his mind of the actors of the story.
It was curious to note that the presentation which the author gave
coincided with the idea of the majority of his audience. I was fresh
from the country but had with me that evening a rather
ultra-fashionable young lady. She said she was not interested in the
lecture because it represented the sort of people she did not know and
never expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her
subsequent career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three
matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands
were of the common lot.
Speaking of Dickens, one picture remains indelibly pressed upon my
memory. It was the banquet given him at which Horace Greeley
presided. Everybody was as familiar with Mr. Pickwick and his portrait
by Cruikshank in Dickens's works as with one's father. When Mr.
Greeley arose to make the opening speech and introduce the guest of
the evening, his likeness to this portrait of Pickwick was so remarkable
that the whole audience, including Mr. Dickens, shouted their delight in
greeting an old and welI-beloved friend.
Another educational opportunity came in my way because one of my
uncles was postmaster of the village. Through his post-office came
several high-class magazines and foreign reviews. There was no rural
delivery in those days, and the mail could only be had on personal
application, and the result was that the subscribers of these periodicals
frequently left them a long time before they were called for. I was an
omnivorous reader of everything available, and as a result these
publications, especially the foreign reviews, became a fascinating
source of information and culture. They gave from the first minds of
the century criticisms of current literature and expositions of political
movements and public men which became of infinite value in
after-years.
Another unincorporated and yet valuable school was the frequent
sessions at the drug store of the elder statesmen of the village. On

certain evenings these men, representing most of the activities of the
village, would avail themselves of the hospitable chairs about the stove
and discuss not only local matters but the general conditions of the
country, some of them revolving about the constitutionality of various
measures which had been proposed and enacted into laws. They nearly
all related to slavery, the compromise measures, the introduction of
slaves into new territories, the fugitive slave law, and were discussed
with much intelligence and information. The boys heard them talked
about in their homes and were eager listeners on the outskirts of this
village congress. Such institutions are not possible except in the
universal acquaintance, fellowship, and confidences of village and
country life. They were the most important factors in forming that
public opinion, especially among the young, which supported Mr.
Lincoln in his successful efforts to save the Union at whatever cost.
A few days after returning home from Yale I entered the office of
Edward Wells, a lawyer of the village, as a student. Mr. Wells had
attained high rank in his profession, was a profound student of the law,
and had a number of young men, fitting them for the bar under his
direction.
I was admitted to the bar in 1858, and immediately opened an office in
the village. My first client was a prosperous farmer who wanted an
opinion on a rather complicated question. I prepared the case with great
care. He asked me what my fee was, and I told him five dollars. He said:
"A dollar and seventy-five is enough for a young lawyer like you."
Subsequently he submitted the case to one of the most eminent lawyers
in New York, who came to the