THE NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION 7 
erous foreign phrases into ordinary English. A born reformer, 
he had an inherited urge to fight obscurantism and to make 
the truth. available. Such a stand aroused bitter opposition 
among conservative lawyers, and he was subjected to severe 
ridicule and abuse. His motto was, “The only men who make 
any lasting impression on the world are fighters.” Although 
called cold and forbidding, he had stanch admirers. He defi- 
nitely impressed his generation as an outspoken critic of an- 
tiquated legal practice. 
David, being older than Cyrus and early established as a 
lawyer in New York, was able to give a helping hand to his 
young brother. Cyrus deserved aid from his older brothers 
who had attended college, since the family’s finances were not 
sufficient to send him there. David and Cyrus, though dif- 
fering on many political questions, remained life-long friends. 
They were highly individualistic but strongly affectionate. 
Their long residence as neighbors in New York reinforced 
family ties and the memories based on childhood days, when 
they had knelt in the home sitting-room and listened to long 
prayers from the old parson. All their lives, scattered though 
the Field children were, they recalled vividly their puritani- 
cal upbringing in the Massachusetts hill village, where their 
world was an old-fashioned parsonage in an isolated commu- 
nity of Yankee stock. 
Another older brother, Stephen, became a United States 
Supreme Court justice after an adventurous career. In 1849 
at the age of thirty-three, he sailed for California, the land of 
gold, where he landed with ten dollars in his pocket. Relieved 
from the supervision of father and brother, he entered heart- 
ily into the rough life of the frontier. Having had legal train- 
ing, he was soon involved in actions at law, political feuds, 
and land speculation. It was his intimate acquaintance with 
Western land and mineral conditions that brought about his 
appointment to the United States Supreme Court by Lincoln 
during the Civil War. 
