country. Afterwards, however, by accepting the appointment of
Attorney General he became one of the king's officers, and it was
in this relation that he was subsequently brought face to face
with his distinguished pupil in the trial of the most remarkable
case which preceded the Revolutions.

Mr. Otis devoted two years of time to his legal studies before
beginning the practice of his profession. The study of law at
that time was much more difficult than at the present day. The
student was obliged to begin de novo with the old statutes and
decisions, and to make up the science for himself by a difficult
induction, which not many young men were able to do successfully.

Law text-books were virtually unknown. Otis did not even have
access to "Blackstone's Commentaries." No authoritative works on
evidence or pleading existed in the English language.

The student must get down his Acts of Parliament, his decisions
of the King's Bench, his Coke, his black-letter dissertations on
the common law, and out of these construct the best he could a
legal system for himself. To this work Mr. Otis devoted himself
from 1745 to 1747, after which he left the office of Judge
Gridley and went to Plymouth, where he applied for admission to
the bar, and was accepted by the court. He began to practice in
1748--the year of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, when the
political and historical status of Europe was again fixed for a
brief period.

The young attorney almost immediately took rank at the Plymouth
bar. The old records of the court at that place still show the