94 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



kindly suggested, I expressed my earnest and most respect- 

 ful thanks for the honor and advantages so unexpectedly 

 offered to me, and asked for a few weeks for consideration 

 and for consultation with my nearest friends. We then 

 emerged from under the shade of those noble elms, and I 

 retired, thoughtful and pensive, to my chamber. The con- 

 fidence reposed in me by President Dwight, and thus ten- 

 dered in advance, increased my sense of responsibility in 

 view of a highly important and arduous undertaking. I 

 felt it, however, to be a relief to escape from the practice 

 of the law, which never appeared to me desirable. There 

 are indeed bright spots in a career at the Bar : right may 

 sometimes be vindicated against wrong, and injured inno- 

 cence protected ; but the temptation would often be strong 

 especially when backed by wealth to contend against 

 justice, and by force of talent and address to make the 

 worse appear the better cause, and to screen the guilty from 

 punishment, the fraudulent from the payment that is justly 

 due. If one could always be engaged in a good cause, and 

 could be at liberty to follow the promptings of his con- 

 science, without suppression or perversion of truth, or con- 

 cealment or palliation of wrong, then indeed the practice 

 of law would appear most desirable and honorable ; and 

 with requisite talent and learning, and the impulses of a 

 generous temperament, a career at the Bar might be truly 

 noble ; but having been a diligent and attentive listener in 

 the courts of law during my course of study of the pro- 

 fession, I had seen that the beau-ideal sketch was too often 

 merely a picture of the imagination. The associations 

 which the practice of the law creates are often highly 

 undesirable. Often the most unworthy part of mankind 

 throng the courts of justice, or are compelled to appear 

 there by the mandate of law, and the practising lawyer is 

 obliged to consort with the weak and the wicked, as well 

 as with the wise and good. Such were some of the thoughts 

 which occurred to me on the first view of the question of 





