Part 4

Much stress was placed on a thorough mastery and careful analysis of all the arguments presented by the writers on any subject under consideration. Then when it was certain that they were fully understood they were criticized, so that what was unsound was rejected and what was true accepted. We were thoroughly drilled in the necessity of distinguishing between the accidental and the essential. The proper method of presenting a subject and an argument was discussed. We were not only learning about the human mind but learning how to use it, learning how to think. A problem would often be stated and the class left to attempt to find the solution unaided by the teacher. Above all we were taught to follow the truth whithersoever it might lead. We were warned that this would oftentimes be very difficult and result in much opposition, for there would be many who were not going that way, but if we pressed on steadfastly it was sure to yield the peaceable fruits of the mind. It does.

Our investigation revealed that man is endowed with reason, that the human mind has the power to weigh evidence, to distinguish between right and wrong and to know the truth. I should call this the central theme of his philosophy. While the quantity of the truth we know may be small it is the quality that is important. If we really know one truth the quality of our knowledge could not be surpassed by the Infinite.

We looked upon Garman as a man who walked with God. His course was a demonstration of the existence of a personal God, of our power to know Him, of the Divine immanence, and of the complete dependence of all the universe on Him as the Creator and Father “in whom we live and move and have our being.” Every reaction in the universe is a manifestation of His presence. Man was revealed as His son, and nature as the hem of His garment, while through a common Fatherhood we are all embraced in a common brotherhood. The spiritual appeal of music, sculpture, painting and all other art lies in the revelation it affords of the Divine beauty.

The conclusions which followed from this position were logical and inescapable. It sets man off in a separate kingdom from all the other creatures in the universe, and makes him a true son of God and a partaker of the Divine nature. This is the warrant for his freedom and the demonstration of his equality. It does not assume all are equal in degree but all are equal in kind. On that precept rests a foundation for democracy that cannot be shaken. It justifies faith in the people.

No doubt there are those who think they can demonstrate that this teaching was not correct. With

[Illustration:

Underwood & Underwood

CALVIN COOLIDGE

_At the age of three_]

them I have no argument. I know that in experience it has worked. In time of crisis my belief that people can know the truth, that when it is presented to them they must accept it, has saved me from many of the counsels of expediency. The spiritual nature of men has a power of its own that is manifest in every great emergency from Runnymede to Marston Moor, from the Declaration of Independence to the abolition of slavery.

In ethics he taught us that there is a standard of righteousness, that might does not make right, that the end does not justify the means and that expediency as a working principle is bound to fail. The only hope of perfecting human relationship is in accordance with the law of service under which men are not so solicitous about what they shall get as they are about what they shall give. Yet people are entitled to the rewards of their industry. What they earn is theirs, no matter how small or how great. But the possession of property carries the obligation to use it in a larger service. For a man not to recognize the truth, not to be obedient to law, not to render allegiance to the State, is for him to be at war with his own nature, to commit suicide. That is why “the wages of sin is death.” Unless we live rationally we perish, physically, mentally, spiritually.

A great deal of emphasis was placed on the necessity and dignity of work. Our talents are given us in order that we may serve ourselves and our fellow men. Work is the expression of intelligent action for a specified end. It is not industry, but idleness, that is degrading. All kinds of work from the most menial service to the most exalted station are alike honorable. One of the earliest mandates laid on the human race was to subdue the earth. That meant work.

If he was not in accord with some of the current teachings about religion, he gave to his class a foundation for the firmest religious convictions. He presented no mysteries or dogmas and never asked us to take a theory on faith, but supported every position by facts and logic. He believed in the Bible and constantly quoted it to illustrate his position. He divested religion and science of any conflict with each other, and showed that each rested on the common basis of our ability to know the truth.

To Garman was given a power which took his class up into a high mountain of spiritual life and left them alone with God.

In him was no pride of opinion, no atom of selfishness. He was a follower of the truth, a disciple of the Cross, who bore the infirmities of us all. Those who finished his course in the last term of senior year found in their graduating exercises a real commencement, when they would begin their efforts to serve their fellow men in the practical affairs of life. Of course it was not possible for us to accept immediately the results of his teachings or live altogether in accordance with them. I do not think he expected it. He was constantly reminding us that the spirit was willing but the flesh was _strong_, but that nevertheless, if we would continue steadfastly to think on these things we would be changed from glory to glory through increasing intellectual and moral power. He was right.

To many my report of his course will seem incomplete and crude. I am not writing a treatise but trying to tell what I secured from his teaching, and relating what has seemed important in it to me, from the memory I have retained of it, since I began it thirty-five years ago. He expected it to be supplemented. He was fond of referring to it as a mansion not made with hands, incomplete, but sufficient for our spiritual habitation. What he revealed to us of the nature of God and man will stand. Against it “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

As I look back upon the college I am more and more impressed with the strength of its faculty, with their power for good. Perhaps it has men now with a broader preliminary training, though they then were profound scholars, perhaps it has men of keener intellects though they then were very exact in their reasoning, but the great distinguishing mark of all of them was that they were men of character. Their words carried conviction because we were compelled to believe in the men who uttered them. They had the power not merely to advise but literally to instruct their students.

In accordance with custom our class chose three of its members by popular vote to speak at the commencement. To me was assigned the grove oration, which according to immemorial practice deals with the record of the class in a witty and humorous way. While my effort was not without some success I very soon learned that making fun of people in a public way was not a good method to secure friends, or likely to lead to much advancement, and I have scrupulously avoided it.

In the latter part of my course my scholarship had improved, so that I was graduated _cum laude_.

After my course was done I went home to do a summer’s work on the farm, which was to be my last. I had decided to enter the law and expected to attend a law school, but one of my classmates wrote me late in the summer that there was an opportunity to go into the office of Hammond and Field at Northampton, so I applied to them and was accepted. After I had been there a few days a most courteous letter came from the Honorable William P. Dillingham requesting me to call on him at Montpelier and indicating he would take me into his office. He recalled the circumstance when I found him in the Senate after I became Vice President. But I had already reverted to Massachusetts, where my family had lived for one hundred and fifty years before their advent into Vermont. Had his letter reached me sooner probably it would have changed the whole course of my life.

Northampton was the county seat and a quiet but substantial town, with pleasant surroundings and fine old traditions reaching back beyond Jonathan Edwards. It was just recovering from the depression of 1893, preparing to eliminate its grade crossings and starting some new industries that would add to the business it secured from Smith College, which was a growing institution with many hundreds of students.

The senior member of the law firm was John C. Hammond, who was considered the leader of the Hampshire Bar. He was a lawyer of great learning and wide business experience, with a remarkable ability in the preparation of pleadings and an insight that soon brought him to the crucial point of a case. He was massive and strong rather than elegant, and placed great stress on accuracy. He presented a cause in court with ability and skill. The junior member was Henry P. Field, an able lawyer and a man of engaging personality and polish, who I found was an Alderman. That appeared to me at the time to be close to the Almighty in importance. I shall always remember with a great deal of gratitude the kindness of these two men to me.

That I was now engaged in the serious enterprise of life I so fully realized that I went to the barber shop and divested myself of the college fashion of long hair. Office hours were from eight to about six o’clock, during which I spent my time in reading Kent’s Commentaries and in helping prepare writs, deeds, wills, and other documents. My evenings I gave to some of the masters of English composition. I read the speeches of Lord Erskine, of Webster, and Choate. The essays of Macaulay interested me much, and the writings of Carlyle and John Fiske I found very stimulating. Some of the orations of Cicero I translated, being especially attached to the defense of his friend the poet Archias, because in it he dwelt on the value and consolation of good literature. I read much in Milton and Shakespeare and found delight in the shorter poems of Kipling, Field and Riley.

My first Christmas was made more merry by getting notice that the Sons of the American Revolution had awarded me the prize of a gold medal worth about one hundred and fifty dollars for writing the best essay on “The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution,” in a competition open to the seniors of all the colleges of the nation. The notice came one day, and it was announced in the next morning papers, where Judge Field saw it before I had a chance to tell him. So when he came to the office he asked me about it. I had not had time to send the news home. And then I had a little vanity in wishing my father to learn of it first from the press, which he did. He had questioned some whether I was really making anything of my education, in pretense I now think, not because he doubted it but because he wished to impress me with the desirability of demonstrating it.

But my main effort in those days was to learn the law. The Superior Court had three civil and two criminal terms each year in Northampton. Whenever it was sitting I spent all my time in the court room. In this way I became familiar with the practical side of trial work. I soon came to see that the counsel who knew the law were the ones who held the attention of the Judge, took the jury with them, and won their cases. They were prepared. The office where I was had a very large general practice which covered every field and took them into all the Courts of the Commonwealth but little into the Federal Courts. I assisted in the preparation of cases and went to court with the members of the firm to watch all their trial work and help keep a record of testimony for use in the arguments. It was all a work of absorbing interest to me.

The books in the office soon appeared too ponderous for my study, so I bought a supply of students’ text books and law cases on the principal subjects necessary for my preparation for the bar. These enabled me to gain a more rapid acquaintance with the main legal principles, because I did not have to read through so much unimportant detail as was contained in the usual treatise prepared for a lawyer’s library, which was usually a collection of all the authorities, while what I wanted was the main elements of the law. I was soon conversant with contracts, torts, evidence, and real property, with some knowledge of Massachusetts pleading, and had a considerable acquaintance with the practical side of statute law.

I do not feel that any one ever really masters the law, but it is not difficult to master the approaches to the law, so that given a certain state of facts it is possible to know how to marshal practically all the legal decisions which apply to them. I think counsel are mistaken in the facts of their case about as often as they are mistaken in the law.

All my waking hours were so fully employed that I found little time for play. My college was but eight miles distant, yet I did not have any desire to go back to the intercollegiate games, though I was accustomed to attend the alumni dinner at commencement. There was a canoe club which I joined, on the Connecticut, about a mile over the meadow from the town where I often went on Sunday afternoons. I was full of the joy of doing something in the world. Another reason why I discarded all outside enterprises and kept strictly to my work and my books was because I was keeping my monthly expenditures within thirty dollars which was furnished me by my father. He would gladly have provided me more had I needed it, but I thought that was enough and was determined to live within it, which I did. Not much was left for any unnecessary pleasantries of life.

Soon after I entered the office Mr. Hammond was elected District Attorney and Mr. Field became Mayor of the city, so that I saw something of the working of the city government and the administration of the criminal law.

The first summer I was in Northampton came the famous free silver campaign of 1896. When Mr. Bryan was nominated he had the support of most of the local Democrats of the city, but he lost much of it before November. One of them sent a long communication to a county paper indorsing him. This I answered in one of the city papers. When I was home that summer I took part in a small neighborhood debate in which I supported the gold standard. The study I put on this subject well repaid me. Of course Northampton went handsomely for McKinley.

With the exception of a week or two at home in the summer of 1896 I kept on in this way with my work from September, 1895, to June, 1897. I then felt sufficiently versed in the law to warrant my taking the examination for admission to the Bar. It was conducted by a County Committee of which Mr. Hammond was a member, but as I was his student he left the other two, Judge William G. Bassett and Judge William P. Strickland, to act on my petition. I was pronounced qualified by them and just before July 4, 1897, I was duly admitted to practice before the Courts of Massachusetts. My preparation had taken about twenty months. Only after I was finally in possession of my certificate did I notify my father. He had expected that my studies would take another year, and I wanted to surprise him if I succeeded and not disappoint him if I failed. I did not fail. I was just twenty-five years old and very happy.

It was a little over eleven years from the time I left home for the Academy in the late winter of 1886 until I was admitted to the Bar in the early summer of 1897. They had been years full of experience for me, in which I had advanced from a child to a man. Wherever I went I found good people, men and women, and young folks of my own age, who had won my respect and affection. From the hearthstone of my father’s fireside to the court room at Northampton they had all been kind and helpful to me. Their memory will always be one of my most cherished possessions.

My formal period of education was passed, though my studies are still pursued. I was devoted to the law, its reasonableness appealed to my mind as the best method of securing justice between man and man. I fully expected to become the kind of country lawyer I saw all about me, spending my life in the profession, with perhaps a final place on the Bench. But it was decreed to be otherwise. Some Power that I little suspected in my student days took me in charge and carried me on from the obscure neighborhood at Plymouth Notch to the occupancy of the White House.

THE LAW AND POLITICS

CHAPTER THREE

THE LAW AND POLITICS

It is one thing to know how to get admitted to the Bar but quite another thing to know how to practice law. Those who attend a law school know how to pass the examinations, while those who study in an office know how to apply their knowledge to actual practice. It seems to me that the best course is to go to a school and then go into an office where the practice is general. In that way the best preparation is secured for a thorough comprehension of the great basic principles of the profession and for their application to existing facts. Still, one who has had a good college training can do very well by starting in an office. But in any case he should not go into the law because it appears to be merely a means of making a living, but because he has a real and sincere love for the profession, which will enable him to make the sacrifices it requires.

When I decided to enter the law it was only natural, therefore, that I should consider it the highest of the professions. If I had not held that opinion it would have been a measure of intellectual dishonesty for me to take it for a life work. Others may be hampered by circumstances in making their choice, but I was free, and I went where I felt the duties would be congenial and the opportunities for service large. Those who follow other vocations ought to feel the same about them, and I hope they do.

My opinion had been formed by the high estimation in which the Bench and Bar were held by the people in my boyhood home in Vermont. It was confirmed by my more intimate intercourse with the members of the profession with whom I soon came in contact in Massachusetts after I went there to study law in the autumn of 1895. When I was admitted to practice two years later the law still occupied the high position of a profession. It had not then assumed any of its later aspects of a trade.

The ethics of the Northampton Bar were high. It was made up of men who had, and were entitled to have, the confidence and respect of their neighbors who knew them best. They put the interests of their clients above their own, and the public interests above them both. They were courteous and tolerant toward each other and respectful to the Court. This attitude was fostered by the appreciation of the uprightness and learning of the Judges.

Because of the short time I had spent in preparation I remained in the office of Hammond and Field about seven months after I was admitted to the Bar. I was looking about for a place to locate but found none that seemed better than Northampton. A new block called the Masonic Building was under construction on lower Main Street, and when it was ready for occupancy I opened an office there February 1, 1898. I had two rooms, where I was to continue to practice law for twenty-one years, until I became Governor of Massachusetts in 1919. For my office furniture and a good working library I paid about $800 from some money I had saved and inherited from my grandfather Moor. My rent was $200 per year. I began to be self-sustaining except as to the cost of my table board, which was paid by my father until September, but thereafter all my expenses I paid from the fees I received.

I was alone. While I had many acquaintances that I might call friends I had no influential supporters who were desirous to see me advanced and were sending business to me. I was dependent on the general public; what I had, came from them. My earnings for the first year were a little over $500.

My interest in public affairs had already caused me to become a member of the Republican City Committee, and in December, 1898, I was elected one of the three members of the Common Council from Ward Two. The office was without salary and not important, but the contacts were helpful. When the local military company returned that summer from the Cuban Campaign I did my best to get an armory built for them. I was not successful at that time but my proposal was adopted a little later. This was the beginning of an interest in military preparation which I have never relinquished.

During 1899 I began to get more business. The Nonotuck Savings Bank was started early that year, and I became its counsel. Its growth was slow but steady. In later years I was its President, a purely honorary place without salary but no small honor. There was legal work about the county which came to my office, so that my fees rose to $1,400 for the second year.