between a young man's graduation and the beginning of his
professional career. Having pursued this course with himself he
insisted that his younger brother, Samuel Alleyne Otis, should
take the same course. In one of his letters to his father--a
communication fortunately rescued from the holocaust of his
correspondence--he discusses the question and urges the
propriety of the young man's devoting a year or two to general
study before taking up his law books. An extract from the letter
will prove of interest. The writer says: "It is with sincerest
pleasure I find my brother Samuel has well employed his time
during his residence at home. I am sure you don't think the time
long he is spending in his present course of studies; since it is
past all doubt they are not only ornamental and useful, but
indispensably necessary preparatories for the figure I hope one
day, for his and your sake, as well as my own, to see him make in
the profession he is determined to pursue. I am sure the year
and a half I spent in the same way, after leaving the academy,
was as well spent as any part of my life; and I shall always
lament I did not take a year or two further for more general
inquiries in the arts and sciences, before I sat down to the
laborious study of the laws of my country.

"My brother's judgment can't at present be supposed to be ripe
enough for so severe an exercise as the proper reading and well
digesting the common law. Very sure I am, if he would stay a
year or two from the time of his degree, before he begins with
the law, he will be able to make better progress in one week,
than he could now, without a miracle, in six. Early and short
clerkships, and a premature rushing into practice, without a
competent knowledge in the theory of law, have blasted the hopes,