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VOL. XVI.

No. ii.

BOSTON.

NOVEMBER, 1904.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SEVENTY YEARS,1 BY JAMES B. SCOTT, Professor in the Columbia University School of Law. SENATOR GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR is widely known in political circles. He was at one time in high repute as a law yer and is equally deserving of respect al though his importance in national affairs has largely obscured his professional repu tation. As is well known, he was born in Concord, .Massachusetts, on August 29, 1826; he was educated at Harvard College and graduated with the class of 1846; he spent the next two years at the Harvard Law School and then betook himself to Worcester, where he settled and practised his profession for the twenty years before entering upon his political career in 1869 as a member of the House of Represen tatives. Mr. Hoar's success in life clearly proves the wisdom of his choice of the law. Family traditions with an inherited ideal; a careful college training supplemented by a course in a law school of repute; experience in the practical work and details of a law office eminently fitted him for the law. Add to this a singularly winning presence and abil ity of a high order and it is evident that suc cess and distinction in his chosen profession were only a matter of time. Family influ ence and politics undoubtedly counted, but native ability, industry and application un doubtedly were the controlling, if not the 1Autobiography of Seventy Years. By George F. Hoar. With portraits. Two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1903. (IX+434+ VIII+493 pp.)

only factors in his success. His twenty years at the bar of Worcester made him a leader, and Mr. Hoar's complacent survey of this part of his career is clearly justified. ''1 have been," he says, "at some time or other in my life, counsel for every one of the fifty-two towns in Worcester County." (Vol. I., p. 159.) When the court was in session he was constantly engaged in jury trials. "Day after day, and week after week, I had to pass from one side of the court-house to the other, being engaged in a very large part of the important actions that were tried in those days. . . . General Dcvens [his partner] and I had at one term of the Supreme Court held by Chief Justice Bigelow twenty trial actions. ... I used to have eighteen or twenty law cases at the fall term every year." And in a later passage, speaking of his practice, when entering Congress for the first time in 1869, he says: "My law practice was rapidly increasing. Professional charges in those days were ex ceedingly moderate as compared with the scale of prices now, and I had inherited the habit of charging low fees from my partner and friend, Emory Washburn. H I had the same class of clients now that I had then, I could at the present scale of charges for professional services easily be earning more than fifty thousand dollars a year, and I could earn it without going to my office in the evening, and also take a good vacation every summer." Mr. Hoar was fortunate early in practice.