Mr. Parsons, before he became Chief Justice, was sitting in his house at Newburyport one Sunday morning, when a client and friend, who lived at Salem, was announced and said: “Mr. Parsons, I beg your pardon for making a call on Sunday. I would not do it if it were my own matter, but the case is that I am guardian for some minor children and a matter of importance to them is coming up in the Probate Court at Salem to-morrow morning. I have had no opportunity to get advice and so I have taken the liberty to ask your counsel.” “Never practice law on Sunday,” said Parsons. “Why, of course I understand that,” said the other, but I thought that perhaps, under all the circumstances, you might be willing to aid me.” “Never practice law on Sunday,” said Parsons. “Good day, Mr. Parsons, I am sorry to have troubled you.” “Stop a minute,” said Parsons, “do you want advice as to the moral aspect of the case or as to the legal aspect of it?” “Why, as to the legal aspect, of course. I am satisfied that my position is fair and right. I want to know whether it will stand law.” “Well, now, I will tell you,” said Parsons, “I don’t know anything about your case and I don’t want to hear anything about it, but I know you, and if you think that your position is fair and just you may go ahead on that and I will be responsible for the law.”

Someone asked him, when he was Chief Justice, if it were true that he never lost a case while he was at the Bar. “Yes,” said the Chief Justice, “that is true. I never lost a case, but my clients lost a great many.”

Chief Justice Parsons, because of his preoccupation with his thoughts, was sometimes careless about his dress. He was a clubable man, to use Dr. Johnson’s phrase, and some of his intimate friends thought that in a genial hour a useful hint might be given him. So it was arranged that Mr. Harrison Gray Otis should invite the group to dinner and manage the matter. Mr. Otis was the one to do it, for he was a man of taste, quite “the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” of great personal elegance and public distinction, and a graceful entertainer. Accordingly, the plan was carefully staged, and during the dinner the conversation took a natural turn toward social customs, usages, modes of dress and the like, and finally Mr. Otis, in a natural way, but with some distinctness, said: “For my own part, I always put on a clean shirt every day.” The Chief Justice, who had apparently been giving his undivided attention to his dinner, here looked up and said: “Why, Otis, what a confoundedly dirty fellow you must be! I can wear a shirt for a whole week.”

Jeremiah Mason told of a professional conference between himself, when quite a young man, and Mr. Parsons before he became Chief Justice. Among the elements in the case was a conveyance of parish land by a clergyman, and its nature and effect were under discussion. Mr. Mason suggested that it might be held to be a covenant to stand seized. Mr. Parsons turned to him quickly and said: “Mason, I like that; that is a good idea of yours; in the relation between a clergyman and his parish there is some analogy to that between a man and his wife.” Mr. Mason, in telling the story, said: “I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that a consideration of blood or marriage was necessary to support a covenant to stand seized, but I said nothing, and as soon as I got home I took down my books and began to study the subject, and found the blood spurting out between the very lines of the page.”

It is grateful to recall the remaining member of the Triumvirate, Professor Emery Washburn, for he was an enthusiast, an indomitable and joyous worker at the age of sixty-three. I do not say that Parker and Parsons were not enthusiasts in their own way. They must have been so to accomplish what they did, but neither Parker nor Parsons manifested and imparted the contagious enthusiasm about their daily work which carried Washburn and the class with him along the arid path of the law of real estate. He was always busy and always accessible and perhaps, on the whole, the most useful member of the Triumvirate. He had been a leader of the very able Bar of Worcester and Governor of the Commonwealth, and was the author of valuable law books, with which the profession is familiar. I had a piece of good luck with him in my first and only Moot Court case. As I stood up to open the case, Professor Washburn, sitting as judge, said: “Mr. Adams, instead of reading the printed case, suppose you just state the facts in your own way.” It happened that I was about to ask him to let me do that and was already prepared. So I came off with flying colors and probably got more credit for readiness than I deserved.

I quote from the “History” at page 285:

“In describing his first official visit to the Law School, late in 1869, President Eliot speaks of knocking at the door of Washburn’s room and, entering, received the usual salutation of the ever-genial Governor Washburn. ‘Oh, how are you? Take a chair,’ this without looking at me at all. When he saw who it was, he held up both his hands with his favorite gesture and said, ‘I declare, I never before saw a President of Harvard College in this building. Then and there I took a lesson from one of the kindest and most sympathetic of teachers.’”

There is, however, historical proof that on at least one prior occasion a President of Harvard was in Dane Hall. John Quincy Adams one day mounted his horse at Quincy and rode over to Cambridge to see President Quincy, who greeted him and pretty soon suggested that they call on Judge Story in his lecture room. The two distinguished visitors were gladly welcomed and were installed by Judge Story, one on each side of him, and he, at their request, proceeded with his lecture. Both of these eminent gentlemen were Stoics. President Quincy went through the New England winters without wearing an overcoat, and Mr. Adams, when at Washington, used to swim in the Potomac and light his own fire in winter and, I believe, read a chapter of the Old Testament and a chapter of the New Testament and wrote in what Henry Clay (who had been tripped up by Mr. Adams on some question of fact) called “that infernal diary of his in which he has put down everything that has happened since the adoption of the Federal Constitution”; and all this before breakfast. As Judge Story proceeded with the rapid and even flow of his lecture, he became aware of a smile upon the faces of his class. A quick glance to either side of him explained it, and, with a cautionary gesture and in a confidential tone, he said: “Young gentlemen, you see before you two melancholy examples of the evil effect of early rising. Always remember that it is of a great deal more importance to be awake after you are up, than simply to get up early.”

There is another story which does not relate to the Law School, but which I will venture to tell, both as a picture of early Cambridge days, and as a manifestation of Harvard scholarship under adverse circumstances. There was then no Harvard Bridge and no horse-car line, and, when the culture of Cambridge went to Boston to hear Emerson lecture in the winter evening, the best available vehicle was a large, open, four-horse sleigh, owned and driven by a liveryman named Morse. On one such evening the lecture was over, and the return trip was on and so was a fine, powdery snowstorm. The sleigh proceeded across the Cambridge bridge and then through East Cambridge and so to Cambridge, stopping now on one side of a street to discharge passengers at a small house, and now on the other side at a big house, and so on, and the fine snow kept sifting down and Morse, perched high up in front, was growing more and more ghostly, when out from the sleigh rose the voice of James Russell Lowell, intoning a fragment from Horace, adapted so as to embrace the charioteer of the sleigh:

“Pallida Mors[e] pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres,”