Our readers are receiving this month, in addition to the usual charming article by former Judge Frederic Adams, a Fourth of July oration delivered by Mr. Justice Parker of our Supreme Court in the Church of St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea, Northeast Harbor, Maine, two and a-half years ago. Because this address is not recent gives special reason for its publication now. We only learned recently of this address and, after seeing it, requested of the Judge the privilege of publishing it in the Law Journal, a request finally granted. It seemed to us not only that the general matter and fine, clear statement of facts and elevated American sentiments warranted the preservation of this address, but also that our readers might be interested to compare what some of our best minds thought of events at the close of the Treaty at Versailles and what has really happened since in American and world affairs.

SOME REMINISCENCES, MOSTLY LEGAL.

BY HON. FREDERIC ADAMS, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

III. Anecdotes of the Harvard Law School and of its Famous Triumvirate.

I have on my shelves a beautiful book. “The Centennial History of The Harvard Law School,” 1817-1917, published by The Harvard Law School Association, 1918. This work, of about four hundred pages, has been written and compiled by the Faculty, with the assistance of graduates. It is admirably printed on excellent paper and liberally illustrated. The whole story of the great School is spread before the reader: its modest beginning; its Golden Age of Story and Greenleaf; the sedate and conservative era of the Triumvirate, Parker, Parsons and Washburn, in which my own lot fell; and then Langdell, the apostle of a new idea, and his many brilliant and interesting followers. The centre of gravity has been shifted from the text-book to the case and this is philosophical, for evidently the cases are the original evidences of the law. But the idea of taking up what Thackeray calls “the vast legend of the law” as a direct subject of study was so revolutionary that it won its way very slowly. I quote from the “Centennial History” a spirited sketch of Professor Langdell’s opening, and of the early history of the new system:

“The day came for the first trial of the new method of study and teaching. The class gathered in the old amphitheater of Dane Hall—the one lecture room of the School—and opened their strange new pamphlets, reports bereft of their only useful part, the head-notes! The lecturer opened his.