Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/273

 don their offspring the moment they are hatched. Or, to employ a more appropriate trope, he had been encouraged to plant the seed of a mighty oak, but was not called upon to cultivate the ground or to tend the sapling.

Asahel Stearns, Esq., therefore deserves our respectful attention as dean, registrar, secretary, professor, librarian, treasurer, publicity agent, efficiency expert, and entire faculty of the Harvard Law School during its infant stage. He was a graduate of the class of 1797, was a former Member of Congress, and was (and continued to be) District Attorney of Middlesex. He enjoyed a high professional reputation. With Chief Justice Shaw he revised the Massachusetts Statutes, and his work on Real Actions was long the standard text for that subject. He was warmly interested in charities. Socially he was a great favorite, was noted for his courteous manners, and exercised a generous hospitality. Though of grave and serious aspect, he was humorous and rather easy-going. He was in short well described by that favorite formula of the hard-pressed biographer—“equally respected and beloved.”

All the same, he was not the man for the difficult place in which he found himself. He had none of Par-