Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And TriumphsFuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
History
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Fuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
Biography
The only law lectures Marshall ever attended were those of Chancellor
Wythe, at William and Mary College, Williamsburg, while the Revolution
was still going on. Before the close of the war he was admitted to the
bar, but the courts were all suspended until after Cornwallis's
surrender. Before the war closed Marshall walked from near Manassas Gap,
or rather from Oak Hill, his father's residence, to Philadelphia on foot
to be vaccinated. The distance was nearly two hundred miles; but he
walked about thirty-five miles a day, and when he got to Philadelphia
looked so shabby that they repelled him at the hotel; but this only made
him laugh and find another hotel. He never paid much attention to his
dress, and observed through life the simple habits he found agreeable as
a boy. For two years he practiced in one rough, native county; but it
soon being evident that he was a man of extraordinary grasp of a law
case, he removed to Richmond, which had not long been the capital, and
there he lived until his death, which happened in 1835 in the city of
Philadelphia, whither he had repaired to submit to a second operation.
The first of these operations was cutting to the bladder for the stone,
and he survived it. Subsequently, his liver became enlarged and had
abcesses on it, and his stomach would not retain much nutriment.
Marshall was a social man, and at times convivial; and I should think it
probable that, though he lived to a good old age, these complaints were,
to some extent, engendered by the fried food they insist upon in
Virginia, and addiction to Madeira wine instead of lighter French or
German wines. He was one of the last of the old Madeira drinkers of this
country, like Washington, and his only point of pride was that he had
perhaps the best Madeira at Richmond. Above all other men who ever lived
at Richmond, Virginia, Marshall gives sanctity and character to the
place. His house still stands there, and ought to become the property of
the bar of this country. It is now a pretty old house, made of brick and
moderately roomy.
AT THE BAR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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