So we had to listen to very respectable and
worthy, but rather dull and tame conservative gentlemen, or
stay away, as we preferred. A few of the young men, of whom
I was one, conspired to get possession of the Lyceum. They
turned out in force for the election of officers, chose me
President, and we got Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker
and Ralph Waldo Emerson and other shining lights of a newer
philosophy, much to the indignation of the old Whig magnates.
But the lectures were very successful, and at the end of my
Presidency, which lasted two or three years, we had an ample
balance in our treasury.
If I were to give an account of my professional life for
twenty years, I must make another book. It was full of interest
and romance. The client in those days used to lay bare his
soul to his lawyer. Many of the cases were full of romantic
interest. The lawyer followed them as he followed the plot
of an exciting novel, from the time the plaintiff first opened
his door and told his story till the time when he heard the
sweetest of all sounds to a lawyer, the voice of the foreman
saying: "The jury find for the plaintiff.
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