LAW AS A PROFESSION

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS,-I hope that, in presenting myself before you without the usual preparation of a written address, I may not be thought to have undervalued the services of this day, or the compliment of being invited to take part in them. I assure you that I have not underestimated either. An occasion like this-the farewell festival of the departing-touches the sensibilities of all thoughtful minds. I should be sorry if it failed to reach mine. If eloquence or fine learning were at my command, I should esteem few occasions for their employment more appropriate or more attractive than this. But it is to you, gentlemen of the graduating class, that I came to speak, not to the audience by which you are surrounded, or the distinguished guests who grace your festival with their presence. And while I can bring you no flowersnot even the humble flowers of the mountains-to add to the garlands of the hour, perhaps I can offer you something more useful and more durable than flowers -the suggestions of experience.

Your feet are on the threshold of the profession in which I have spent all the active days of my life—one of the noblest of the secular professions, in its best

estate; one that has been well characterized as being "as honorable as justice, as ancient as the forms of law"; a profession in which you are probably destined to achieve whatever of success in this world of any sort you attain; one that is infinite in its gradations, covering the whole world-wide distance between the jurist and the pettifogger. And it is the question, to you, not of the hour only, but of the lifetime, which way are you going when you leave the institution, by the instruction of which you have apparently so well profited? By what star, in a sky which is so full of stars, do you propose to steer, in that long and unreturning voyage on which, from zone to zone, and from shore to shore, you will have to direct your own course across a pathless sea? I desire, therefore, in the plainest and simplest way, without rhetoric or ornament, to ask your attention to a consideration, of necessity hasty, of some of the conditions of success in the profession of the law.

I had thought, when I came here, of saying a word or two at the outset upon what may be called "adaptations of the profession." It is by no means necessarily a disparagement to any man to say that he has not in him the making of a great lawyer. He may be equally great, or much greater, in some other capacity. Professional adaptation is rather peculiar than great. But after what I have learned from my friends in charge of this school, and certainly after what I have heard in the admirable essay that has been read to us, in part, if that is to be taken as any fair specimen of your attainments, I may omit that branch of the subject. I am sure that on that point the "court will be with me" without argument, and that there is no gentle

man before me who is about to commit the mistake of adventuring himself upon a route for which divine Providence has not provided him with a ticket.

But another of what may be called the commonplace requisites-so many important things in this world are commonplace- another commonplace requisite to professional success, let me name in passing, and that is perseverance. There is no profession that in its earlier stages better illustrates the idea of "hope deferred." It will seem to you, for a while, as though the time never would come when you are going to be wanted; the field is so full of older and better men; the best that you can do seems so little; other vocations, presenting better immediate prospects, will open in every direction around you. It seems a great while to wait, and very uncertain what you are waiting for. Now, there comes in the sentiment that one of your Boston poets has put into words better than

mine:

"The surest, firmest element of luck

Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck."

The pluck that can wait as well as labor; that can stay as well as fight.

The man who succeeds, other things being equal, is the man who "sticks"; and the man who "sticks" is very likely to be the man who is qualified to succeed. Your time will certainly come, if you live. Every man's weight, in this profession, and probably in others, comes some time or other to be accurately known. The opportunity to take a high place is certainly going to be given to you, if your life is spared. It is not so material, therefore, how soon it is coming, as whether you will be ready to meet it when it does

come. Are you fit for the emergency when it arises -perhaps unexpectedly? Have you been preparing yourselves for it through the waiting months-possibly years? Are you going to be found wanting when you come to be weighed in the final balance? That is the question. And, therefore, let me say to you, "When you have made yourselves members of this honorable and honored profession, and have found out that you are fit for it, break down the bridge behind you; let there be no retreat; take it, as you will take your wives by-and-by, 'for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer.

Now, then, being in the profession, and considering what is the grand essential and criterion of ultimate success (and by that I mean the success that is worth having), let me state as the central idea, the leading thought that I have to present to-day, that the success of the lawyer in the long run, and the best run, and the only run that is worth regarding, is exactly commensurate with his absolute, unflexible, unqualified devotion to the truth. The world has amused itself, and I suppose will continue to amuse itself, with a good deal of cheap wit on this subject. Many people think the lawyer has nothing to do with the truth; that his business is to pervert it, to distort it, to evade it, to crown it with the thorns of all manner of technicalities, and to crucify it between two thieves. Well, that is very amusing, doubtless; but it is a serious mistake. Let me state my proposition again, and you will live to see, as I have seen, the force of it; and you will see it now, if you pause to look at the lives of the distinguished men by whom you are surrounded. Your success will be in proportion

to the extent to which you become, not only the students, but the champions, the advocates, the living examples, in all respects and particulars, of the truth. And this should be especially impressed upon the young men of our profession for two reasons-because, in the first place, the truth that the lawyer deals with is not abstract truth. The quarrels of mankind over abstract propositions never did a great deal of good, though undoubtedly they may have done a great deal of harm. It is the practical application of the truth to all the affairs and concerns and interests and relations of human life that the lawyer deals with. In the next place, he is under a temptation that does not apply to the students after the truth in other branches, because there is often a pressure upon him-a pressure to counsel and to advocate what is not sound; and there is also a contest about it, and nothing in the world so controls a man's judgment upon any subject as to fight for it. Men always believe, sooner or later, in the cause they are fighting about; and, therefore, the lawyer needs to take special and peculiar care to be sure that he is right in his conclusions. In respect to legal truths, his relations are twofold-with his clients and with the courts. Public confidence, you will find, is a plant of slow growth; it is a pretty durable plant when it is grown, like most plants of slow growth, and it only grows in that soil which produces wise, safe, and successful counsel. He only commands it who is generally found to be right. And then when the lawyer comes to deal with tribunals of justice, with those learned judges by whom his reputation is to be made, if it is to be made at all-for, let the unthinking crowd say what they will, it is the judges