Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2Hoar, George Frisbie
History
Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2
Hoar, George Frisbie
United States -- History -- 1865-1921; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1900
Among my own classmates, as I have already said, Judge Webb,
Fitzedward Hall and Calvin Ellis attained very great distinction,
although no one of them stood very high in rank. In the next
class John Felton, Judge Endicott, Judge Charles Allen, and
Tuckermann, the naturalist, were the persons who have been
most famous in after life. I believe no one of them, except
Felton who graduated the second scholar, ranked very high
in college. I myself graduated with a fairly decent rank.
I believe I was the nineteenth scholar in a class of sixty-
six. When I graduated I looked back on my wasted four years
with a good deal of chagrin and remorse. I set myself resolutely
to make up for lost time. I think I can fairly say that I
have had few idle moments since. I have probably put as much
hard work into life as most men on this continent. Certainly
I have put into it all the work that my physical powers, especially
my eyes, would permit. I studied law in Concord the first
year after graduation. I used to get up at six o'clock in
the morning, go to the office, make a fire and read law until
breakfast time, which was at seven in the summer and half-
past in the winter. Then I went home to breakfast and got
back in about three-quarters of an hour and spent the forenoon
until one diligently reading law. After dinner, at two o'clock,
I read history until four. I spent the next two hours in
walking alone in the woods and roads of Concord and the neighboring
towns, went back to the office at seven, read a little geometry
and algebra, reviewing the slender mathematics which I had
studied in college, and then spent two hours in reading Greek.
I read through Thucydides, Homer and Xenophon's Hellenica
and some other Greek books in that year. Sundays I went to
church twice, but shut myself up in a room at home the rest
of the day and read a great quantity of English literature,
including Milton, Spencer, Chaucer, George Herbert, South's
Sermons and other English classics, reading over again Butler's
Analogy and Jouffroy. It has been said that if a man wish
to acquire a pure English style he should give his days and
nights to Addison. I say that if a law student wish to acquire
a vigorous and manly English style, the fit vehicle for conveying
weighty thoughts to courts or juries or popular assemblages,
let him give his days and nights to Robert South.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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