this life we have so much admired a singular glory has been shed. A high Christian motive controlled him. The busy man of the world was conscious of the presence here of the invisible Kingdom of God, and of the blessings it offers to the barbarians of the Dark Continent. The source of his long service, the inspiration of his untiring heroic devotion, his own beautiful words, recently published, reveal to us:

Oh, were I left to choose the fame
That evermore might cling
Around the mention of my name,
Like ivy on a tower close clustering,
The Triumphs, trumpet told, of war,

The Senate's plaudits, and the crowd's hurrah,
Might all unnoticed ring.

Potosi's teeming mine, Golconda's sunny gem;

Aye, all the powers that boast the diadem,
I'd hold as worthless, spurn unsought,

If but a single voice

Of Gratitude, unbought,

From Africa should say

I'd made one heart rejoice,

Or in that heathen land had caused one soul to pray.

CHAPTER VII

MR. LATROBE AS A LAWYER-FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTBALTIMORE IN 1824

ANCES.

The solid foundation of character on which Mr. Latrobe's whole life was built was as significant at the beginning of his career as later; and we find in his memories evidence of the confidence which he then inspired.

"I ought not, in this record of my life, to omit what should have been told in its place the circumstances under which I commenced my professional life (pecuniarily). The day I was admitted to practice, we-my mother and Iwere many hundred dollars in debt. The sale of my father's library had long since been realized and there remained of availables of a tangible shape only my mother's interest in some New Jersey woodland and a claim, afterwards realized, of some few hundred dollars on the Chesapeake and Ohio Delaware Canal Company. One could live in a modest way and comfortably on some $1200 a year, but it was necessary to have this sum. Without it the cost might as well have been $20,000. We had it not. So I went to Philip Laurenson, the grocer, and to Philip Baltzell, the dry goods merchant, and to William Surly, the tailor, and asked them to trust me, stating that if I lived I would pay them-if I died they had little to expect. And they trusted me, and they were all paid in money. The debt of gratitude is still unpaid. They have long since passed away, and this record of their kindness is my only way to liquidate it."

He relates a story showing the financial straits to which the Latrobe family were reduced. Benjamin Latrobe was at St. Mary's College, where he took high honors in 1824 in mathematics. While attending college he lived with his brother. He afterwards became chief engineer of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Mr. Latrobe used to speak of their very meagre means of living. He told me that in those days the dress of a gentleman was short knee breeches and black silk stockings. Black silk stockings were very expensive, and he and Ben between them could only afford one pair, so that when one went to a party the other did not. The beauty of black silk stockings was their blackness; by reason of constant use they became thin, and would show white. Then they used to ink their legs in order to keep up a handsome appearance.

It was his custom to write verses which would be set to music by one of his friends. These would then be introduced at the different entertainments. Among other verses that he wrote was one, a part of which is probably a quotation from Byron and which had contained the line "My bark is upon the deep, love." When this was repeated, its usefulness was entirely destroyed by the French Consul who, when he heard it, said, "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça-my bark, bow-wow, bow-wow?" This was fatal to the verse which never recovered. The first verse of a serenade in "Odds and Ends," written by Mr. Latrobe, has the following words. This, no doubt, is the song of the story:

My bark is upon the deep, love,
My comrades, impatient, call;
Awake, while the fairies sleep, love!
Awake then, more bright than all,
Awake awake-awake, Elvira, love.

He remained with General Harper until the latter's death in 1825. He was admitted into the Baltimore County Court May 8, 1824; Court of Appeals of Maryland 1827; the United States District Court, September Term 1825; United States Circuit Court 1827; United States Supreme Court, 1830.

It seems almost incredible that one could accomplish so much, in such a variety of fields, as Mr. Latrobe did. The secret of his being able to do so lay in his theory of life, which he announced in an address delivered to the Law Department of the University of Georgetown in 1874 and which may be designated as the "utilization of scraps of time." He was never idle. As a soldier, lawyer, inventor, poet, painter, philanthropist and writer, he was a practical illustration of what could be accomplished by carrying out his own theory. How different from the method of living now in vogue among those who arrogate to themselves the position of the leaders of society, where, as Lowell has said, the "highest achievement of our present civilization is to waste time without lassitude."

Quoting from a letter which he wrote to his most intimate friend, Charles Carroll Harper, some years later, in which he states that he has started for a holiday of four weeks, he gives a list of his equipment, which would hardly be duplicated by a fashionable visitor of today. He says in this letter:

"There was a trunk of goodly dimensions, a carpet bag of glaring pattern, a surtout and an umbrella in its appropriate case. This in the ordinary course. Then there was a sketch book, with a new fangled contrivance of mine own to keep the pencils and brushes safe. Then a book on botany for beginners and a more scientific one for adepts. A magnifying glass, with three lenses, to ferret out the

secrets of the class cryptogamia, a pocket thermometer to make myself wiser about the temperature of the countless springs I am to visit, a folding foot rule and an ample map of Virginia done up in a portable shape. 'Truly,' said I, as, in looking in all my pockets and finding what I sought, my pencil case, as usual, in the last receptacle examined, I tumbled out the most of the articles here enumerated, "Truly, Denon was a fool to me, and as for Belzoni and the Landers, they are not to be named in the same breath with John H. B. Latrobe, a member of the Baltimore Bar, etc., equipped for a journey to the White Sulphur Springs.'

I have always believed that no information was ever lost upon a lawyer. I recollect appearing in a case in which the other side endeavored to establish the mental capacity of a testatrix. One of the principal witnesses was a man who had lived in the same boarding house with the deceased and who on examination testified that he had based his judgment on the game of whist he had seen her play. Being a whist player myself, I was able, on cross-examination, to develope the fact that his knowledge of the game was such that, if judged by it, he would be a fit candidate for the insane asylum; and this utterly destroyed the value of his testimony.

Mr. Latrobe says in his address to the Law School: "Clients do not seek you to discuss abstract principles, but to deal with facts growing out of their various occupations; and the wider your information in regard to these, the more highly appreciated will your advice be and the greater its usefulness. 'Your profession, dealing by turns with every branch of human knowledge, brings by turns every faculty, taste and accomplishment into play. Not that you can expect to be admirable Crichtons; or to have it said of you, as was said of a celebrated professor, substituting the word 'law' for 'science,' that 'science,' was his