Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/398



What matter if to the bulk of the legal profession these “graduates” were known as “Law School Pills”? What matter if the number of students, though fluctuating, had long averaged about one hundred and forty only? What if many of them were mere raw boys, with no college or other proper training for their work? What if the grotesque remains of the law library were little more than an open quarry, whence any visitor might purloin any volume he chose—provided he could find it? What if the new president’s first visit to Dane Hall in 1869 was a nine days’ wonder, almost an intrusion? Did not the fame of Story, Kent, and Greenleaf still give the School a national reputation? Had not Parsons also, and Washburn, made brilliant names as writers of textbooks—those foundations of all law? Were not the lean years of the School during the war safely passed? All in all, things were going pretty comfortably.

But comfortable days are fleeting, even in a law school. At the end of the decade Parsons, graceful