As now my thoughts like clustering bees have clung To thee, my Horseshoe, o'er the lintel hung, The future bard, with song more richly fraught,-- Some reverenced wrong the nucleus of his thought, Some relic crown or virtuoso's gun, Some nation's banner when all earth is one,-- Back through the past in mournful strain shall wind Where demon fancies vex the darkling mind, Where light but faintly streaks the dappled sky, Nor Morn has shot his glittering shafts on high; Trembling with grief and hope, his lyre shall thrill To twilight times of blending good and ill, Where whizz of bullets, and the clanking chain, Jar on the praise of Peace and Freedom's reign. In louder strains shall burst the exulting close, That sounds the triumph o'er the struggling foes,-- The slave unbound, War's iron tongues all dumb,-- His glorious Present, our all hail To Come, All hail To Come, when East and West shall be-- While rolls between the undividing sea-- Two, like the brain, whose halves ne'er think apart, But beat and tremble to one throbbing heart! He took what was then an unusual method of making himself a good lawyer. That was to begin to deal with a legal principle in historic order, going back to the first case where it was announced and tracing it down through the reports, making no use of text-books. That was the way the old lawyers before Blackstone got their training. I have been told, though that happened after I left Cambridge, that he and Professor Langdell, the eminent teacher at Harvard who had introduced that method with so much success, studied together. Whether it was Felton's plan or Langdell's I do not know. John Felton died suddenly in May, 1877. Everybody who comes to Washington from California who is old enough speaks with pleasure of his knowledge of Felton and is full of stories of his brilliant wit. He had probably the largest fees ever received by an American lawyer. He is said by his biographer to have received a fee of a million dollars in one case. His death was received with universal sorrow. All the places of business and amusement were closed and the flags displayed at half mast on the day of his funeral.