" Next to the "yes,"
of a woman, that is the sweetest sound, I think, that can
fall on human ears.
I used to have eighteen or twenty law cases at the fall term
each year. The judges gave their opinions orally in open
Court, and the old judges like Shaw and Metcalf, used to enliven
an opinion with anecdotes or quaint phrases, which lent great
interest to the scene. If Walter Scott could have known and
told the story of the life of an old Massachusetts lawyer
from the close of the Revolution down to the beginning of
the Rebellion, there is nothing in the great Scotch novels
which would have surpassed it for romance and for humor.
I think I may fairly claim that I had a good deal to do with
developing the equity system in the courts of Massachusetts,
and with developing the admirable Insolvency system of Massachusetts,
which is substantially an equity system, from which the United
States Bankruptcy statutes have been so largely copied.
The great mass of the people of Massachusetts, Whigs and Democrats
as well as Republicans, were loyal and patriotic and full
of zeal when the war broke out.
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