But I found time somehow, as I have said, to keep up a constant and active interest in politics. I was also able to contribute something to other things which were going on for the benefit of our growing city. I got up the first contribution for the Free Public Library, of which I was made President. I took a great interest in the founding of the famous Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and I was the first person named in its Act of Incorporation. The first meeting of its Trustees was held in my office, and I am now the only surviving member of that Board, in which I have retained a warm interest ever since. In 1869 I made before the Massachusetts Legislature, on a petition which was successful for a legislative grant to that school, what I believe is the first public address ever made in behalf of Technical Education in this country. I was for some time President of the Board of Trustees of the City Library and while President planned the excellent reading room connected with the Library, for which I obtained a handsome endowment by personal solicitation. I was also Trustee of Leicester Academy. The Worcester Lyceum, which furnished the principal course of lectures in the city in those days, was in the hands of some very worthy and conservative old Whigs. They would not permit any politics or religion, or what was called Radicalism, either in religious or social matters, to be discussed on their platform. So we had to listen to very respectable and worthy, but rather dull and tame conservative gentlemen, or stay away, as we preferred. A few of the young men, of whom I was one, conspired to get possession of the Lyceum. They turned out in force for the election of officers, chose me President, and we got Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson and other shining lights of a newer philosophy, much to the indignation of the old Whig magnates. But the lectures were very successful, and at the end of my Presidency, which lasted two or three years, we had an ample balance in our treasury. If I were to give an account of my professional life for twenty years, I must make another book. It was full of interest and romance. The client in those days used to lay bare his soul to his lawyer. Many of the cases were full of romantic interest. The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened his door and told his story till the time when he heard the sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman saying: "The jury find for the plaintiff." Next to the "yes," of a woman, that is the sweetest sound, I think, that can fall on human ears.