Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/306

 I was to deliver a lecture upon a certain topic, but there was a text-book which furnished the foundation. …It was not expedient for me to state the propositions in the words of the text. The students were acquainted with them already. It would be of little advantage to vary the phraseology. If the textbook was a good one, how was I to deliver a lecture without a “departure,” which lawyers well know is, in pleading, obnoxious to a special demurrer? I availed myself largely of my privilege, however, and having made an earnest request to the students to ask me any questions on their part, they availed themselves of their privilege. The School was at that time a very strong one, and so we had for some time a lively interchange of interrogatories. It was not difficult to perceive that the students were disposed to try the new Professor, and I enjoyed it, for, having been, fifteen years upon the Bench, I felt much more at home in answering questions than I did in delivering Law lectures, properly so called.

Despite such individual points of excellence, the general scheme of instruction at the Law School was for many years in amazing confusion. The courses were designed to cover two years’ work; but, apparently on the principle that the law has neither beginning nor ending, only half of them were given in any one year; so that it was entirely a matter of luck whether on entering the school you found yourself at the beginning of the curriculum or plunged into the middle of it.

A considerable offset to this disjointed state of theory was the attention paid to practice in the moot courts. These, if not invented, were certainly brought into great prominence, by Judge Story. One was held at least