Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/859

 21. KENT: AN AMERICAN LAW STUDENT 845 business of the court of chancery oppressed me very much* but I took my daily exercise, & my delightful country rides among the Catskill or the Vermont mountains with my wife, & kept up my health and spirits. I always took up the cases in their order, & never left one until I had finished it. This was only doing one thing at a time. My practice was first to make myself perfectly & accurately (mathematically accurately) master of the facts. It was done by abridging the bill, & then the answers, & then the depositions, & by the time I had done this slow tedious process I was master of the cause & ready to decide it. I saw where justice lay and the moral sense decided the cause half the time, & I then sed down to search the authorities until I had exhausted my books, & I might once & a while be embarrassed by a technical rule, but I most always found principles suited to my views of the case, & my object was to discuss a point (^) as never to be teazed with it again, & to anticipate an angry & vexatious appeal to a popular tribune by disap- pointed counsel. During those years at Albany, I read a great deal of English literature, but not with the discipline of my former division of time. The avocations of business would not permit it. I had dropped the Greek as it hurt my eyes. I persevered in Latin, & used to read Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Salust, Tacitus, &c & Ciceros offices, & some of them annually. I have read Juvenal, Horace & Virgil eight or ten times. I read a great deal in Pothiers works and always consulted him when applicable. I read the Ed & Q reviews & Annl register ab initio & thoroughly, & voyages & travels & the Waverley novels &c, as other folks did. I have always been excessively fond of voyages and travels. In 1823 a solemn era in my life arrived. I retired from the office at the age of 60, & then immediately with my son visited the Eastern States. On my return the solitude of my private office & the new dinasty did not please me. I be- sides would want income to live as I had been accustomed. My eldest daughter was permanently settled in N York, & I resolved to move away from Albany, & I ventured to come
 * "So" omitted.