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THE LAW AS A SCIENCE IN
vacation time the lawyer who has worked hard all the year through, so hard, in fact, that he may have compared himself, like Dr. C. W. Eliot, to a factory operative, rejoices in the serene consciousness of a versatility that has been forgotten for many months, and suddenly wakens to the fact that he is, after all,—or might so be described by a dispassionate observer,—a flower of American professional life, with a broad and kindly outlook on his fellowmen, and talents always ready for active service and sufficiently brilliant to achieve that golden reward far more to be desired than wealth, a fife combining noble philanthropy and the cultivation of all that is finest, with efficacious lei sure and unselfish luxury. Lolling in a hammock with the Sunday newspa pers, he reads the illustrated articles on "Radium" and "Our Grinding Di vorce Mills," and resolves to consecrate his free moments during the coming year to the study of natural science and sociology. A stanza in a ten-cent mag azine by one of those who deserve to be classed as our minimum rather than our minor poets awakens in his breast a slumbering thirst for Tennyson and Browning. A glimpse of an Italian laborer whom he would not have had time to see on his way to his office in the city stirs in him smouldering fires of
human sympathy, and begets a passion ate longing to know more of the time of Mazzini and Cavour, and the hopes and fears of the Young Italy that they in spired. Even so does the refreshed lawyer forget the tedious, contracting effects of his ill-paid vocation in the glorious freedom of natural impulses his vacation brings him, and even so he forgets his own personal limitations, after the fashion of those who are too liberally provided with the world's goods and attentions. After all, what is there in the lawyer's vocation distinctly dignified and worth while? Good answers to this question have frequently been given, and the profession of the law is by common consent one of honor and usefulness, but it is not our purpose to dwell upon the more banal aspects of the subject. The lawyer who is worthy of his profession and of his hire will cultivate upright ness in the practice of his calling, he will endeavor to conduct himself as an instrument of justice and good order, and he will associate himself with sound public and social movements. But this is not all. He owes to his pro fession and to himself something more, and that something is frequently over looked by those who discuss the oppor tunities and rewards of the lawyer's career. The law, it must not be forgotten, is a science. As in the case of the science
