It was while living in Cambridge, I think, that Father permitted me to accompany him to Dedham and hear him try a case. Though but eight or nine years of age, the scene impressed me vividly, and I remember the case now. The sheriff took me into his box and perched me up on an elevated seat so that I could watch what took place. Father, I remember, shook hands with the lawyer on the other side and was very polite to him throughout the trial. The latter was a young man, and appeared rather overshadowed and embarrassed. The trial involved the ownership of a cow. Father put in his evidence and made his argument with the utmost suavity and without heat or declamation. He, however, fully, convinced my interested mind (and he did the jury, too) that his client ought to have a verdict. How much such an early incident will sometimes impress us, and what an unconscious influence it may sometimes have in determining the subsequent choice of a profession! I cannot claim the credit of my Father's talents, and I have achieved almost nothing of his success; yet it may perhaps be owing to early impressions that the law, in the first reading, has often seemed to me like a twice-told tale—something of which a knowledge and aptitude had been transmitted by heredity or by a study which I had made in a previous stage of existence!

Another childish memory associated with my Father's office is the old red wooden bridge we used to pass in going from Cambridge to Boston. Father often walked with me part or all of the way to and from Boston, holding my little hand affectionately in his. The bridge remained standing for many years, and often in my manhood I have recalled my Father there, with a tear.