"During the period of their residence together, the time not required by business the brothers devoted to reading and discussion. Political economy and law, the science of government in general and that of the United States in particular, were the favorite themes. Locke and Justinian, Mill, Adam Smith, and Vattel divided honors with the Federalist, the Resolutions of ninety-eight, and the Debates of the Constitutional Convention. It was said they knew every word of the last three by memory; and it is certain that year after year, almost without interruption, they sat far into the night debating almost every conceivable question that could arise under the constitution of the United States." Jefferson Davis, as his congressional speeches and his book show, became deeply versed in the subjects of the joint study just described. I must note, however, that the discussion which engaged him for such a considerable period of his ante-public life was had only with one who was of the same State-rights creed as he himself was, and that it was all in the closet, as it were. You can only begin the making of a great lawyer by feigned cases and moot courts. Likewise the true political leader must early be plunged into real contentions over questions of actual interest, and thus almost from the very first mix practice with theory. Compare Webster and Toombs, each at his outset combating with the ablest lawyers of his State as adversaries, and also publicly discussing varied questions of policy. I suspect that this prolonged closet training, with its abundance of academic debate, had much to do in developing Davis into that supra-logical consistency, stiffness, and unmodifiability of opinion which is one of his special differences as a practical statesman from the two great men last mentioned. This, and the mental habitude given by his military education and experience, mark him as _sui generis_ among our political leaders. His public career shows more of the doctrinaire and precisian than can be found in any other one of these. In the long post-graduate course which he took in private under his brother, he was preparing for public life without being aware of it, as it seems to me.