A distinguished member of the Boston Bar was recently asked by a younger professional brother what he considered the most valuable acquirement a young man could possess for the successful practice of the law. He at once replied, "To be able to tell your clients what _to do_." This was the purpose for which the Boston University Law School was founded; this has been the constant aim of its teachings; and the selection of practitioners for instructors, coming fresh from consultations with their clients, and from sharp contests in the court-rooms, has been made from the first with the endeavor to set before the students live men, who could tell them what to do and how to do it. If students could be more frequently brought face to face with the living heroes of the law, the zeal for careful work and laborious study would be fanned almost into enthusiasm. To follow the complex details of a difficult branch of law, from the lips of an eminent counsellor who has but lately exhausted the subject in an important case at the bar, is a rare and precious pleasure. At our medical schools the students sit at the feet of the leading physicians and surgeons of the day. Why are young lawyers sent forth to practise, acquainted only with the old masters of the law, and ignorant, often, of the very names of the eminent ones of their day and generation? Chief-Justice Shaw said, "A man may be a laborious student, have an inquiring and discriminating mind, and have all the advantage which a library of the best books can afford; and yet, without actual attendance on courts, and the means and facilities which practice affords, he would be little prepared either to try questions of fact or argue questions of law." "I was once asked," said a high legal authority, "to inspect the examination-books of a graduating class in a law school. The student whose work I was shown was the son of a distinguished man, a faithful scholar, and a young man of excellent ability. The subject he had written upon was Equity Jurisprudence,--one of the most difficult branches of the law. He had, indeed, studied his English models carefully, and his book showed the extreme theoretical form of instruction pursued at the school. Among other things, in describing the course of equity procedure in England, he fully and elaborately explained each minute step; to what _building in London_ certain papers were to be taken on a certain day, and at a precise time, and in what _room_ filed; _and I certainly expected to be told in what pigeon-hole_."