On leaving college, Sumner's mind was not made up as to his future work. He was somewhat inclined to the law, but questioned his probable success in it. He spent a year at home in study, mastering mathematics, which he so disliked, and reading Tacitus, Juvenal, Persius, Hume, Hallam, and the like. In the winter he composed an essay on commerce, and received the prize offered by the "Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." Daniel Webster, the president of the society, gave the prize, Liebner's "Encyclopædia Americana," to Sumner, taking his hand and calling him his "young friend." He did not know that this youth would succeed him in the Senate, and thrill the nation by his eloquence, as Webster himself had done. Sumner's class-mates were proud that he had gained this prize, and one wrote to another, "Our friend outstrips all imagination. He will leave us all behind him.... He has been working hard to lay a foundation for the future. I doubt whether one of his class-mates has filled up the time since commencement with more, and more thorough labor; and to keep him constant he has a pervading ambition,--not an intermittent, fitful gust of an affair, blowing a hurricane at one time, then subsiding to a calm, but a strong, steady breeze, which will bear him well on in the track of honor." In the fall of 1831 Sumner had decided to study law, and began in earnest at the Harvard Law School. Early and late he was among his books, often until two in the morning. He soon knew the place of each volume in the law library, so that he could have found it in the dark. He read carefully in common law, French law, and international law; procured a common-place book, and wrote out tables of English kings and lord-chancellors, sketches of lawyers, and definitions and incidents from Blackstone. He made a catalogue of the law library, and wrote articles for legal magazines. He went little into society, because he preferred his books. Judge Story, a man twice his own age, became his most devoted friend, and to the end of his life Sumner loved him as a brother. Chief Justice Story, whom Lord Brougham called the "greatest justice in the world," was a man of singularly sweet nature, appreciative of the beautiful and the pure, as well as a man of profound learning. The influence of such a lovable and strong nature over an ambitious youth, who can estimate? The few friends Sumner made among women were, as a rule, older than himself, a thing not unusual with intellectual men. He chose those whose minds were much like his own, and who were appreciative, refining, and stimulating. Brain and heart seemed to be the only charms which possessed any fascination for him.