Story.
[a]Story's House at Cambridge, Mass.]
STORY.
It is a common saying among lawyers, that in proportion to the labor which their profession exacts, and the degree of distinction which success confers upon them during their lifetime, their fate is a hard one in the struggle for immortality. They are accustomed to say in a tone of half complaint, that the zeal and ability which would earn for them a cheap celebrity in some other pursuit, is expended upon the establishing of some nice distinction, or the solving of some intricate problem which no one but themselves can appreciate, and in which no one but themselves (and their clients) take any interest. There is some truth in all this. The whole community stands ready to read the last production of the literary man, so only that he make it worth reading, and often without requiring even so much; whereas, the neatest point that a lawyer could take is constitutionally repulsive to one-half of creation, and dry and unmeaning to the greater part of the remainder. Even those whose names are on the lips of men, owe their good fortune often to something other than their law. If Blackstone were not among the most classical writers of the English language, we should not have lived to see twenty-one English editions of his Commentaries. He was probably a less profound lawyer than several sergeants who practised before him in the Court of Common Pleas, whose names would escape an insertion in the most Universal Biographical Dictionary. So the successful lawyer must content himself with his worldly prosperity,—if in his lifetime he receives his good things, that must be his comfort, and in truth it is no small one.