RESOURCES TO DRAW ON

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 16, 1882

RESOURCES TO DRAW ON

Mr. Webster used to tell with great zest an incident in his professional life, to illustrate how past studies may prove of great service in an emergency. While practicing in New Hampshire, a blacksmith employed him to defend a contested will. The case was such a complicated one that he was obliged to order books from Boston at an expense of fifty dollars, in order to acquaint himself with and to settle the legal principles involved. He won the case, and as the sum involved was small, charged fifteen dollars for services, and was therefore largely out of pocket. Many years after, when passing through New York, he was consulted by Aaron Burr.

"I have a very perplexing case," said Mr. Burr, "which I cannot disentangle. I know I am right, but see no way of proving it in court."

Mr. Webster listened, and found the principles identical with his early case.

He stated them in such a luminous way that Mr. Burr excitedly asked, " Have you been consulted before, Mr. Webster?"

"No, sir, I never heard of the case till you mentioned it."

"How is it possible that you could unravel such a case at sight, when I had given many hours of anxious study to it in vain?"

Mr. Webster enjoyed his perplexity, but finally relieved him by a statement of the facts. A great sum was at stake, and Mr. Webster received a fee of one thousand dollars to balance his former loss.

The moral of this incident is that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Mr. Webster, when a young lawyer, acted on this maxim, and this laid the foundations of his greatness as a lawyer.