The accident and the rescue caused great excitement in the little island town. The old crier with his bell cried the news of the rescue about the place before the newspaper had out its extras, and every one was deeply moved by the heroism of Sampson, the brave fellow who had so cheerfully died to save his friend.
This experience was a very memorable one to young Russell, and it sobered and matured him, as a great struggle should; and from that moment his life became more settled and serious.
In his Senior year at college, which followed it, he did far better work than he had done in the three years before; and when he entered the law-school of Boston University he began to show his true measure; for he was not only first in his class, but such a first that, as with the old yacht America, there was no second. He took the only prize in the school—-the William Beach Lawrence prize-essay—the first degree summa cum laude ever awarded, and was elected valedictorian of his class by unanimous vote of his classmates.
During all this time he had been working in his father's law-office, supporting himself from the day he left college, and had made six hundred dollars a year alone by revising and correcting the proofs of Wharton's books on criminal law, and verifying the references, which was the most tedious of tasks, but served him a good lesson in care and minuteness.
In 1879 he was a practising lawyer, with a small practice, and no particular ambition, except to increase it; and so he continued for two years, when, to his enormous surprise, he found that without his knowledge or permission he had been nominated for the Common Council of his native city of Cambridge. This was in the fall of 1881. The election was a hot one, and Russell was elected by one vote over his former High-school principal, which was said to have chagrined the latter excessively.
Russell was now twenty-four years old and at the beginning of his political career, which during the next dozen years was destined to be remarkable.
He had always had an interest in politics because of his father's interest in them, and in the Hayes-Tilden campaign of 1876 he spoke for Tilden as a sort of experiment in public speaking, which gave him confidence enough to do considerable speaking during the Garfield-Hancock campaign in 1880. All this had been excellent training, but Russell had to show that he had other good qualities when he was elected to office.
Cambridge at this time had a dishonest government under Mayor Fox, who had put in office corrupt and incapable men, whose idea was that public officers were not elected to make a city pleasant and safe to live in, but to have an easy life on other people's money.
Young Russell was an American born, fresh from the ennobling associations of Harvard College, who knew what American government had been and ought to be, and he at once made himself so outspoken against this corrupt crowd as a Councilman that in the following year he was elected Alderman, a position of far greater power.
He was no sooner in office than the ring began its warfare against him and he against it, in which he gave as hard blows as he took. There were two rival horse railroads in the city. The Mayor was interested in one, and determined to destroy the other. Russell opposed him, and so skilfully and boldly that he carried the Aldermen with him, after one of the bitterest and most difficult fights in his long career.