“‘Mr. Sherman is clever in private, but I will only say he is as badly calculated to appear in such a Company as a chestnut-burr is for an eye-stone. He occasioned some shrewd countenances among the company, and not a few oaths, by the odd questions he asked, and the very odd and countrified cadence with which he speaks; but he was, and did, as well as I expected.’[21] “In the same letter Deane shows his vexation at Sherman’s views regarding traveling on Sunday: “‘Mr. Sherman (would to Heaven he were well at New Haven,) is against our sending our carriages over the ferry this evening, because it is Sunday; so we shall have a scorching sun to drive forty miles in, to-morrow. I wish I could send you his picture, and make it speak, and in the background paint the observations made on him here. But enough of this at present. I will have him drawn in Philadelphia, if it can be done at any reasonable rate.’[22] “To judge these criticisms fairly we must remember that Deane was a man of fashion and of the world, while Sherman was neither. A plain country lad, a hardworking journeyman at his trade, a busy surveyor, a sagacious selectman, a shrewd store-keeper, a hard-headed lawyer, an industrious judge, he had qualities not of a kind that shine in polite society, but of a kind nevertheless that count in life, in every position which a man may be called to fill. He would have made a better figure with better manners. But a rusticity that would have ruined the advance of most men was everywhere tolerated in Sherman, because there was felt everywhere an admiration for his mind and heart,--his solid sense, wise forecast, and practical wisdom. “While living in this town, Sherman was asked one day by a neighbor, the next time he went to the county seat, to retain counsel for him to bring a petition to court in a matter connected with the settlement of an estate. He noted down the facts which he thought it would be necessary to state in the papers prepared for such a proceeding, and the lawyer whom he consulted was so much impressed with the clearness and precision of the memorandum that he strongly advised him to adopt the legal profession. “There were then no American, and, indeed, no English law schools. An education for the bar was commonly gained by studying the works of some of the English judges of former generations, under the advice of a local practitioner, but with little other assistance from him. The system of justice administered in Connecticut was rough and unhewn, and not a few of the judges of the highest courts had never followed the profession of the law.