HORACE GRAY. 631 



that his patience was the same when lie was seventy years old. Again, 

 he found in me, as I doubt not he found in some of the other young men 

 who afterwards served him, a youth fresh from the law school, ready to 

 argue with a good deal of confidence any legal point whatsoever, and 

 not inclined to drop the argument when he had before him so lively 

 and open-minded a disputant as the chief justice. Yet I remember 

 that he never checked my persistence but once, and then most gently. 

 He was in no hurry to make up his mind, glad even to the last moment 

 to hear anything which might properly affect his decision. After leaving 

 his brother judges, he began his further consideration of a case by dis- 

 cussion with his secretary, and examined and considered the authorities 

 by himself or with the help of his secretary in bringing the books. He 

 used no stenographer. In Massachusetts his dictation was taken down 

 in longhand ; in Washington he wrote the first rough draft with a pencil, 

 and this was copied out by his secretary and corrected by the judge in 

 printed proof. His handwriting — rather handsome when given room to 

 extend itself — when confined was not always easily legible. Proud was 

 the moment when a secretary was able to read an inscription which the 

 judge himself could not decipher. I have said that he kept his mind 

 always open to reconsideration for sufficient reason, but he had none of 

 that paralysis of doubt which leads some otherwise excellent judges to 

 postpone a decision until the decision has ceased to be of much use. He 

 knew that a decision upon matters of fact can hardly be made too soon. 

 " He at once made it a rule," Mr. Samuel Hoar has told us, " always to 

 decide every question of fact submitted to him for determination before 

 he went to bed that night, and to make at the time a minute of the 

 decision ; the questions of law could safely wait for a more deliberate 

 examination." 



He excelled at Nisi Prius, and at equity sittings, but his lasting repu- 

 tation, like that of other great judges, is based upon his written opinions. 

 His style had not much of that felicity and distinction which sometimes 

 — though rarely — make literature of a law report, but his meaning 

 was clear. This was his object, and almost his only one. He did not 

 deem himself to be the sole author of the o[)inion which he composed, but 

 rather the mouthpiece of a body of which he was only one member. 

 Hence this style was impersonal. He spent no time searching for a 

 neatly turned phrase, though he would change his words over and over 

 aorain if their meaning seemed obscure. Rhetorical effort in the ex- 

 pressiou of matters not purely literary, even when successful, often 

 savors of affectation. The opinions of some judges manifest this affec- 

 tation ; his never. Nature and experience enabled him to write easily. 



