A similar extract from his journal under the date of December 15th, 1844, reads:—
"I begin a great work,—Thucydides, in Bloomfield's new edition,—with the intention of understanding a difficult and learning something from an instructive writer,—something for the more and more complicated, interior, inter-State American politics.
"With Thucydides, I shall read Wachsmuth, with historical references and verifications. Schomann on the Assemblies of the Athenians, especially, I am to meditate, and master Danier's Horace, Ode 1, 11th to 14th line, translation and notes,—a pocket edition to be always in pocket."
Throughout his life Mr. Choate kept up his classical studies. Few of the graduates of our leading colleges to-day carry from Commencement a training which makes the study of the Greek and Latin authors either easy or pleasant. Mr. Choate, like nearly every lawyer who has ever distinguished himself at the English bar, was a monument to the value of the study of the classics as a mere means of training for the active practical work of a lawyer.
Mr. Choate studied law at Cambridge in the Harvard Law School. Nearly a year he spent at Washington in the office of Mr. Wirt, then Attorney-General of the United States. This was in 1821. Thereafter he was admitted to the bar, in September, 1823. He opened his office in Salem, but soon removed to Danvers, where he practiced for four or five years.
During these earliest years of his professional life he had the fortune which many other brilliant men in his profession have experienced,—that of waiting and hoping. During his first two or three years, it is said, he was so despondent as to his chances of professional success that he seriously contemplated abandoning the law. In time he got his opportunity to show the stuff of which he was made. His first professional efforts were in petty cases before justices of the peace. Very soon however his great ability, with his untiring industry and his intense devotion to any cause in his hands, brought the reputation which he deserved, and reputation brought clients.
In 1828 he removed to Salem. The Essex bar was one of great ability. Mr. Choate at once became a leader. Among his contemporaries at that bar was Caleb Cushing. Mr. Choate at first had many criminal cases. In the year 1830 he was, with Mr. Webster, one of the counsel for the prosecution in the celebrated White murder case.
In 1830 he was elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives, at the age of thirty-one years. At once he laid out a course of study which was to fit him for the duties of his public life. An extract from it reads as follows:—
"Nov. 4, 1830.
"Facienda ad munus nuper impositum.