An interesting and valuable part of the History is a biographical list of the ninety-one men who were teachers in the School during the century covered by the book. One of the names is that of Justice Francis J. Swayze, of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who began in the Centennial year, 1917, a course of lectures on Legal Ethics, which he continues.

I now go back to my own time at the Law School. There was a small Jersey group there. Nehemiah Perry, Henry Young, Job H. Lippincott, Abram Q. Garretson and John R. Emery were men who, like Othello, “have done the State some service.” When Vice-Chancellor Emery passed away, I became the only survivor of the little company.

Professor Joel Parker, as I knew him, was a courteous gentleman of the old school, sixty-nine years of age, tenax propositi public-spirited, courageous and combative, who had established a high reputation as a jurist by his opinions as Chief Justice of New Hampshire for fifteen years. As a conservative Whig he had supported the Compromises of 1850, but presided over a meeting of the citizens of Cambridge, held June 2, 1856, to denounce the assault on Senator Sumner. The conclusion of his speech on that occasion showed the mettle of the man. “For myself, personally, I am perhaps known to most of you as a peaceful citizen, reasonably conservative, devotedly attached to the Constitution, and much too far advanced in life for gasconade; but, under present circumstances, I may be pardoned for saying that some of my father’s blood was shed on Bunker Hill, at the commencement of one revolution, and that there is a little more of the same sort left, if it shall prove necessary, for the beginning of another.” The Professor had a true instinct. The attack on Senator Sumner was the first act of civil war; the John Brown raid the second; the firing on Fort Sumpter the third.

Professor Parker, when Chief Justice of New Hampshire, had a memorable struggle with Judge Story, who held the United States Circuit Court, over a question under the Bankrupt Law. The facts are stated on pages 245 and 246 of the History of the Law School. In my time it was thought that Professor Parker did not like Story, or Story’s rather showy law books. He probably would have agreed with the following remarks on page 12 of the History: “Story was the kindly master who, in his lectures, smoothed the rough places and was profuse with instruction and help. We may suppose his lectures, like his books, to have been learned, fluent, often original and profound, sometimes, however, dodging a difficulty rather than trying to overcome it.” I have heard it said that Story stands higher as a writer of opinions than as a legal author.

There was in my day a student named Stevenson who was assigned to argue one side of a Moot Court case before Professor Parker, sitting as Judge. Stevenson, who knew and well understood the Professor, in the course of his argument read a few sentences from one of Story’s books and then, pausing and looking at the Judge, said: “May it please your Honor. There follows this passage about half a page of Latin. I have not read it, but it looks as though it were on our side.”

Professor Parker, during the War for the Union was pro the administration saepe; pro lege, pro republica semper. He had, of course, profound reverence for the writ of habeas corpus. A student once stated a strong case of treasonable conduct and asked him if he would not suspend the writ in such a case. “No, sir,” said the Professor, “I would not suspend the writ of habeas corpus, but I would suspend the corpus.”

Professor Theophilus Parsons was a son of the great Chief Justice of Massachusetts of the same name. He was sixty-six years of age when I knew him, a man of the world who had touched life at many points, a voluminous writer of law books and an instructive and entertaining lecturer. There was a side to his nature which he did not show to his class. I used to have among my books a small volume of sublimated Swedenborgian doctrine written by him. It was difficult to associate it with the genial and jovial man you saw in the lecture room. I have tried to assimilate this message from the New Jerusalem, but have failed, no doubt because of some invincible ignorance and innate incapacity of my own.

Professor Parsons saw something of Europe after graduating from Harvard in 1815, and I think was at St. Petersburg with William Pinkney, then American minister, when the Grand-duke Nicholas, who was afterwards Emperor, was married to a Prussian princess in July, 1817. He described Mr. Pinkney as coming in from the ceremony in a real or affected huff, and complaining, as he tore off his gloves, that a beggarly Grand-duke had obliged him to get up at eight o’clock in the morning. “But, Mr. Pinkney,” said Parsons, “the wedding was not until twelve o’clock.” “True, sir,” said Pinkney, who affected to be a man of fashion, “but can a gentleman dress in less than four hours?”

Professor Parsons wrote an interesting life of his father, who was an old-fashioned colossus of the common law. Indeed, the Chief Justice took pretty much all knowledge for his province, and was a classical scholar and good mathematician. I moved, or was moved, at the early age of three months, from my birthplace in New Hampshire to the parish of Byfield, Massachusetts, near Newburyport, and lived there for seven years. The father of Chief Justice Parsons was a Congregational minister and pastor of the church in Byfield for more than forty years. When I visit Byfield, as I love to do, I read upon a tablet on the parsonage lawn “Birthplace of Theophilus Parsons.” The Chief Justice had an extraordinary knowledge of the early history, laws, institutions, manners and local usages of the settlers of New England. I had among my law books one that used to remind me of him. A young lawyer once asked him what was the best law dictionary. “Kinnicum’s is the best,” was the answer. A few days later, the young man said to him, “I have asked everywhere for ‘Kinnicum’s Law Dictionary’ and cannot find it.” The Chief Justice laughed and said: “Ask for Cunningham’s.” The book which I had was Cunningham’s “Law Dictionary,” in two folio volumes. A similar incident is told of Judge Story, who was also a ‘longshore man, born in Marblehead, a place which abounded in local peculiarities, as we know from Whittier’s version of “Flud Oireson’s Ride.”

Judge Story was opening the Circuit Court of the United States at Salem, and the clerk, as he went over the panel, called “Michael Treffery.” No answer. “Michael Treffery!” No answer. “That is strange,” said the clerk, “I saw the man here a few moments ago.” “Let me see the list,” said the Judge. He glanced at it and said, to the clerk, “Call Michael Trevay.” The clerk: “Michael Trevay.” “Present,” said a juror. The clerk: “Why did you not answer?” “You never called my name.”