But my main effort in those days was to learn the law. The Superior Court had three civil and two criminal terms each year in Northampton. Whenever it was sitting I spent all my time in the court room. In this way I became familiar with the practical side of trial work. I soon came to see that the counsel who knew the law were the ones who held the attention of the Judge, took the jury with them, and won their cases. They were prepared. The office where I was had a very large general practice which covered every field and took them into all the Courts of the Commonwealth but little into the Federal Courts. I assisted in the preparation of cases and went to court with the members of the firm to watch all their trial work and help keep a record of testimony for use in the arguments. It was all a work of absorbing interest to me. The books in the office soon appeared too ponderous for my study, so I bought a supply of students’ text books and law cases on the principal subjects necessary for my preparation for the bar. These enabled me to gain a more rapid acquaintance with the main legal principles, because I did not have to read through so much unimportant detail as was contained in the usual treatise prepared for a lawyer’s library, which was usually a collection of all the authorities, while what I wanted was the main elements of the law. I was soon conversant with contracts, torts, evidence, and real property, with some knowledge of Massachusetts pleading, and had a considerable acquaintance with the practical side of statute law. I do not feel that any one ever really masters the law, but it is not difficult to master the approaches to the law, so that given a certain state of facts it is possible to know how to marshal practically all the legal decisions which apply to them. I think counsel are mistaken in the facts of their case about as often as they are mistaken in the law. All my waking hours were so fully employed that I found little time for play. My college was but eight miles distant, yet I did not have any desire to go back to the intercollegiate games, though I was accustomed to attend the alumni dinner at commencement. There was a canoe club which I joined, on the Connecticut, about a mile over the meadow from the town where I often went on Sunday afternoons. I was full of the joy of doing something in the world. Another reason why I discarded all outside enterprises and kept strictly to my work and my books was because I was keeping my monthly expenditures within thirty dollars which was furnished me by my father. He would gladly have provided me more had I needed it, but I thought that was enough and was determined to live within it, which I did. Not much was left for any unnecessary pleasantries of life. Soon after I entered the office Mr. Hammond was elected District Attorney and Mr. Field became Mayor of the city, so that I saw something of the working of the city government and the administration of the criminal law.