nature, which always broadens the brain and softens the heart. He had a thrifty father, and a mother of keen intuitions, and they gave their little " Jack " every educational advantage. One of his amusements, when only a twelve-year-old, was to sit at times in the free and easy court room of the village squire, and there listen to the contentions of village lawyers over neighborly squabbles. But when at school he had acquired suffi cient Latin for appreciating the full meaning of persevercntia vincit omnia, he was entered at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsyl vania, and from it graduated with honors in 1868. He next was placed in the office of Socrates Tuttle, the leading lawyer of Pas saic County, where he found a fellow-student in him who is now Vice-President of the United States. Doubtless whenever these dignitaries meet in some of the alcoves of the majestic Congressional Library, on mental refresh ment bent, they can exchange pleasing rem iniscences of those student days, when the future was a puzzle, and their library at com mand a mere closet-full of volumes in com parison with the bookman's wealth of the nation's library. Their legal preceptor well sustained his Christian name in teaching them — as the first Socrates taught his pupil Alcibiades — the love of Justice and Wisdom. Doubtless Hobart and Griggs, during their student life, envied the legal fame of the elder Hornblower, Parker, Frelinghuysen, and Bradley, who were then conspicuous at the bar; and little dreaming of what the future would do for each of them, or that when Justice Bradley should die Griggs would be suggested — only to decline — as candidate for the vacant seat on the Supreme Bench at Washington in 1892. The Attorney-General's novitiate in his profession seems to have differed little from that of other young "limbs of the law" (as novelists still love to call them) who are

resident in districts more or less rural. He listened to the contentions of neighbors about fences, or damage by stray cattle, or encroachments of boundary lines, or differ ences in book accounts, or assaults and bat teries, defamation quarrels and the like. These are contentions that seem trivial, per haps, to students in law schools for whom grave moots are prepared, or to dwellers in large cities; yet those legal contentions in vite keen analyses, assimilation of principles to fact, and they present phases of human nature for study. Moreover, law studies with quiet opportunities for reflection upon them, when pursued in rural localities take greater hold upon the understanding, than when conducted in the whirl and bustle of larger towns and cities; and when time ar rives for practice afford larger scope for emulations and the approbations which en courage. But Paterson as a centre of man ufactures, and a locality for instigating those frictions of human nature which make paths to the jury box, presented unusual oppor tunities for a young lawyer and Griggs availed himself of them. He, as a rising young attorney, became good-fellow-well-met to everybody, but without sacrifice of dignity. He was re garded as a prudent plodder over his law suits, rather than as aiming at only showy brilliancy. His word in or out of court be came recognized as even better than the average affidavit; and he waxed in local popularity as accurate draughtsman, ex aminer of witnesses and pleader. Chosen to the lower House of the Legis lature of his State, when only twenty-six years old (1875), and from the Republican party for whose presidential candidate in the sub sequent year of the Hayes campaign, young Griggs made serviceable campaigning, he became recognized as a valuable ally by comrades, and as a formidable opponent by foes. His prestige in the lower House at tracted his constituents' attention, that next promoted him to the Senate, where he was