I was saved, however, from something of this danger. The injustice
which I had been subjected to, in my own boyhood, had filled me
with the keenest love for the right. The idea of injustice aroused
my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as
a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that
I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the
wrong-doer--for asserting right, and maintaining innocence! I had
my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness,
that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination
of attribute and subject, which distinguish this profession beyond
all others, and seem to confirm the assumption made in its behalf,
by which it has been declared the perfection of human reason. It
will not be subtracting anything from this estimate, if I express
my conviction, founded upon my own experience, that, though such
may be the character of the law as an abstract science, it deserves
no such encomium as it is ordinarily practised. Lawyers are too
commonly profound only in the technicalities of the profession;
and a very keen study and acquaintance with these--certainly a too
great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers--leads
to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful
(sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of
knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason,
and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those
ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely upon
continual sounding to grope their way along the accustomed shores.
Let them once leave the shores, and get beyond the reach of their
plummets, and the good ship must owe its safety to fortune and the
favor of the winds, for further skill is none.
I did not find the practice of the law affect my taste for domestic
pleasures; on the contrary, it stimulated and preserved them. After
toiling a whole morning in the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to
be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear
voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never
stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine
the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly
right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes--scenes
of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich
variety of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent waters, hallowed
by the meek glances of the matron moon. No creature could have
been more gentle than my wife. She met me with a composed smile,
equally bright and meek. I never heard a complaint from her
lips. The evils of which other men complain--the complaints about
servants, scoldings about delay or dinner--never reached my ears.
The kindest solicitude that, in my fatigue, or amid the toils of
a business of which wives can know little, and for which they make
too little allowance, there should be nothing at home to make me
irritable or give me disquiet, distinguished equally her sense and
her affection. If it became her duty to communicate any unpleasant
intelligence--any tidings which might awaken anger or impatience--she
carefully waited foi the proper time, when the excitement of my
blood was overcome, and repose of blood and brain had naturally
brought about a kindred composure of mind.