You will be often employed too, to set aside an office judgment, and plead, _pro forma_, in a case admitting of no defence on the merits. In such a case, where nothing is expected, your adversary, however able, may be unprepared through some neglect of his client. Relying on your rawness and want of skill, he may venture to trial. You strike at the gap in his armor with the dexterity of a veteran; he is nonsuited, and your success is the immediate source of honor and emolument. You find yourself gazed at, followed, and employed by those who never saw you before, and who know nothing of you but that, in a plain case, admitting of no meritorious defence, you had just baffled one of the first men at the bar. The consequence is, you are presently engaged in business of more consequence, and if you acquit yourself well in it, your practice is established and your fortune made. To these two subjects then, of pleading and evidence, I advise you to apply so much attention as to make you feel sure that you understand them thoroughly. Having done this, let them be again revised immediately before you go to the bar, and let them, in all the early stages of your practice, be the constant objects of your attention and study. You can never understand them too well, and your knowledge of the last especially, can never be too ready. It is by ignorance on these topics, that men lose causes they ought to gain. Such defeats are disgraceful and ruinous. When the right of the case is against you, it is your misfortune; but you are never blamed. But to be defeated with law and fact both on your side, is to be weighed in the balance and found wanting. And here let me say a word of the cases which you lose, because the law is against you. For these there is one short rule. "Though you lose your case, do not lose your temper." It is easy for a young man to argue himself into a conviction of the justice of his client's case; but if you do not make others see it too, you must learn to distrust that conviction. Remember that the argument which has convinced you, without convincing others, came to you through the favorable medium of self-love. A young man who doubts the justice of his first cause just after having argued it, must be either very dull, or very philosophical, or the case must have been utterly desperate. On the other hand, remember that the judge is rarely exposed to any undue bias. He can scarcely ever have a motive to do wrong; and he is a man of tried integrity, practised to resist and overcome the influence of such motives. Then remember that he is old, learned and experienced, selected from among his fellows for his endowments; and thus learn to acquiesce in his decisions with that cheerful complacency which so well becomes a young man, distrustful, as all young men should be, of his own judgment.