vouch for the morals and learning of his young friend, and the oath would be administered by the clerk. This done, the new attorney would be introduced to the bar and carried off to the nearest tavern where health and prosperity would be drunk to him in bumpers of strong punch. Thaddeus Stevens has left an amusing account of his brief connection, about 1820, with the Maryland bar. The examination took place in the evening before the judge and the bar committee. His honor informed Stevens that there was one indispensable requisite to the examination. "There must be two bottles of Madeira on the table and the applicant must order it in." Stevens complied with the condition, and, after the wine had been disposed of, one of the committee asked the applicant what books he had read. He replied, "_Blackstone, Coke upon Littleton_, a work on Pleading, and _Gilbert on Evidence_." He was then asked two or three questions, the last of which related to the difference between executory devises and a contingent remainder. A satisfactory answer to this question led his honor again to intervene. "Gentlemen," said the judge, "you see the young man is all right. I will give him a certificate." But before the certificate was delivered, the candidate was informed that usage required that the ceremony should terminate in the same way it had opened, and that two more bottles must be produced. Stevens very willingly complied with this requirement and was made a member of the bar. With such a bar the courts were rude and primitive. The courts sat often times in taverns, where the tedium of business was relieved by glasses of grog, while the judge's decisions were not put on record, but were simply shouted by the crier from the inn door at the nearest market place. In North Carolina the laws were not printed for a long time but only read aloud in the market place, and the courts and legislature met in private houses and taverns. Probably the best type of the judges produced by this system was old Chief Justice Marshall, who occupied the highest seat in the Supreme Court of the United States for 35 years. His decisions were recorded and will be the noblest monument a man could have or wish. In reference to two of them, Judge Story says: "If all the acts of his judicial life or arguments had perished, his luminous judgments on these occasions would give an enviable immortality to his name." Judge Story said of the mode of life of the judges at these general terms of the court: