Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/471

 THE GREEN BAG 54, in the senior class of the Law School and its librarian. He had not received the A. B., but an LL. B in 1853. He was unknown to the Boston bar, though it was understood he had practised in New York City. He had held no public station. He had made few friends in Cambridge. And he had pub lished no text -books! His mates in the class which entered Phillips Exeter in 1845, however, could tell of him. He was then a robust lad of eighteen. His home was in the low one-storied house of a small farm on the poorest soil of the town of New Boston, just west of Manchester, New Hampshire. From his father, John Langdell, he could trace through three generations of hard times on that farm back to a great grandfather who came to Beverly, Massa chusetts, from the old country, bringing with him a bride from Londonderry. His mother, Lydia Beard, was of the canny, hardy ScotchIrish stock that bred our best New England blood. Young Christopher, one of a small family, had smaller advantages. He got what early local schooling he could and entered Exeter rather older than most. He was a typical farmer's boy, bashful, awkward, sturdy, but already wearing strong spec tacles. Plainly too he was very poor. He lived with two chums in the humblest room to be found. He swept the Academy floors, and like Jared Sparks before him he rang the Academy bell. He obtained help from a scholarship, or "went on the foundation." The masters liked him, for when the spirit of mischief was abroad he stood for the honor and good name of the school. So did the boys, for he had a keen sense of fun and a big, rousing laugh. He was elected a mem ber of the famous old literary and debating society, the Golden Branch. Though a hard student he was not a brilliant one. He pos sessed, as he afterwards said of himself, "the virtues of a slow mind." Yet in three years he had not only fitted for college but antici pated the studies of freshman year. Entering Harvard, therefore, as a "fresh soph," with studious habits, bad eyesight,

and slender means, he was little known in the class of '51. Green, its marshal when it took part in the great parade to celebrate the "turning on" of Cochituate water in Boston, noticed Langdell's absence from the march, and next day took him to task. "I preferred to study," was the simple re ply. A few, older than their years, appre ciated his intellectual gifts and his per sonality, so charming when once his reserve was broken through. They used to engage him in long expositions and discussions, memorable in after years. For the most part, however, he lived alone, perfecting his reasoning powers as quietly and as patiently as the diamond-cutter perfects one by one the facets on the gem that, completed, will dazzle the world. He did not return for his senior year nor for graduation, being compelled to replenish his resources by a year of teaching. Already he had decided to study law, and again he had anticipated the elementary work; for in November, 1851, he entered the Law School in the senior class. Parker, Parsons, and Greenleaf, then all recent appointees, were his professors. Again he worked his own way. He obtained the position of student librarian by virtue of which he lodged in one of the small rooms on the upper floor of Dane Hall. He assisted Parsons to collect the material for his great work on contracts. Did he then plan, we may wonder, a greater work on contracts, by himself? Could he have foreseen that he should one day take the chair of his instructor? Was it from pondering the wish of the founder of that chair that he became convinced that the law is a science? That was the conviction, at all events, that gradually took possession of the shy voung law student — the pivot on which a whole system of legal instruction was later to be swung aside into limbo. To his cronies he would dilate on this conviction with all the strength and fascination of his budding powers. Law was a science —• a branch of human reasoning co-ordinated, arranged, and systematized — not a kind of mental