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434 supervision of the instituting of ordinary suits, upon business claims, promissory notes, and the like. They learn, too, the fundamentals of business correspondence, and are taught how to write letters which shall be concise and to the point. In this way they learn, as no mere student can, what the laws of business are that govern and control the machinery of justice. It has, too, much more important results. It rubs them against men, and it takes them, in a certain sense, within the doors of that great school, the Court of Justice itself. It is true that courts of Justices of the Peace, into which the students go, are often not very dignified schools; yet probably the cases in them are as various in their character as in any of the highest courts of record. And there is no education to be had in any purely theoretical school which will confer the practical benefit of the trial by the student of half a dozen sharply litigated cases in a Justice Court. It presents the law in an aspect unfamiliar to the student in the lecture-room. With him, in this way, the beginnings of the great lesson of paring away all matters except essential points, are taught. He acquires something of the difficult art of court presence, of thinking on his feet, of formulating clearly facts and theories, to himself first, and then to the judge or jury. It is the best possible foundation for the study of evidence, which the student finds to be one thing in the books and another in the courts. He learns, perhaps, the secret of what questions not to ask. Besides this, students are frequently called in minor ways into the Courts of Record themselves. There they see, hear, and are brought into contact with older counsel, from whom they consciously or unconsciously learn much. It is seen, too, how justice is administered and how enforced. And these manifestations, scattered and fragmentary though they may be, are connected and made one whole system by the teaching of the theories by instructors in the school.

While the teaching of law by practical lawyers, in connection with its application by actual practice in offices, was the primary aim of the school, yet the instructors do not omit the other common methods. Moot courts are held by each of the instructors in their special subjects, and used by them to emphasize their teaching, and to gauge the practical benefit the students have derived from it. At intervals jury trials are held by some of the instructors, in which students act as counsel, witnesses, court officers, and jurors. In these cases sometimes expert testimony will be given by the young physicians and students of the Medical School in the neighborhood. Physicians array themselves on either side; and the combats, which take the form of personal examinations, are amusing to the lookers-on. In addition to this, there are the daily quiz and recitation, and on some of the subjects frequent dissertations are given by the students, in the shape of ten-minute speeches, upon points about which there has been discussion or in which there is especial interest. After reading the dissertation, the class discusses it, and the lecturer for the time being is expected to be able to stand the flood of questions which are generally poured in upon him. This, with the moot courts, has the effect of provoking discussion and arousing and holding interest. Its aim is to arouse in the student a sense of personal responsibility, and it is successful in that aim. The instructor, we will say, has been speaking of the case of Cook vs. Oxley or of Coggs vs. Bernard, and in illustration, statements of fact involving the doctrine of assent or of pledge are given out to the pupils. These leading cases are no longer the embodiment of abstruse theories, dim and uninteresting, but they become as real as is the theory of fluid pressure to the practical engineer, or of inoculation to the physician. The student who argues, ponders over the facts; the bearing of the leading case to these facts dawns at last with a stronger and stronger light upon him. Research shows the development of the theory down to the present time in all its tortuousness. These facts, which he has thus discovered, he imparts to