Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/274

 ker’s imagination and initiative, or of that driving enthusiasm of Dr. Warren’s, which, in spite of formidable opposition, had carried through the Medical School to success. He could not envisage either the present needs or the future possibilities of the new enterprise. He conceived of his department only as a kind of glorified tutoring-mill of the regular old law-office type, with the addition of some lectures and quizzes as at the Litchfield school, and a “moot court” which was probably Parker’s idea. He seems to have given about a third of his time to his pupils, and the rest to his own practice, though he complained of being over-worked. His teaching was colorless (his portrait shows no expression whatever), and not of a kind to “boom” the reputation of the embryonic project in the least.

Nor were the physical beginnings of the school encouraging. For its location Stearns secured some rooms in “College House Number Two,” originally a private dwelling, which stood, very conveniently for him, next the courthouse—the latter being on the site of the present Coöperative Society building in Harvard Square. Into the front apartment he moved his own law office; in another he collected a “library” of such textbooks as he could buy for about seven hundred dollars, which was all the money allowed him. Here were the lecture-hall, reading-room, book-stack, and con-