of an appointment to the bench. Although he felt at the time no decided inclination for teaching, service in the Law School appeared to Thayer as the higher opportunity for usefulness. He accepted the appointment and threw himself with his whole heart and soul into the new work. When three years later the offer came of a position on the Supreme Judicial Court he declined it, feeling that whatever his personal inclinations, duty required that, having set his hand to the plough, he should not turn back, especially at a time when doing so would be peculiarly embarrassing to the School.

The five years of Thayer's service as Dean showed a rapid and steady development. To maintain the standard set by Dean Ames as a teacher and an administrator was a task possible only for the highest ability. To do this, coming from active practice, without any real interval of preparation, was possible only for the highest ability coupled with extraordinary exertions. Thayer had the ability and made the exertions. While he was Dean the Law School suffered no diminution in prestige or in solid progress.

The man who had felt no special inclination to teach and had doubted whether he had any special aptitude for teaching left upon his pupils no doubt of his capacity. Each year of his service increased his reputation among the students. He freely gave them his time far beyond the mere requirements of the classroom. Regardless of his own convenience, he remained after every lecture as long as any individual was left who desired to ask questions or discuss legal problems. Intellectual powers such as had brought him success in practice it is not easy to turn at once with equal success to teaching; but the intellectual activity, the swiftness of thought, the closeness of reasoning, the stimulating personality, the untiring devotion to work in hand that had always distinguished Thayer, rendered him in a constantly greater degree inspiring as a teacher.

In the administrative work of his office Thayer was no less successful. He was confronted with problems arising not only from the rapidity with which the School had grown, but also from a change of view as to the proper functions of the law and as to the duties of lawyers. He felt the growing and well-founded belief in the community that the law did not satisfactorily fill its place in

modern civilization, that lawyers did not render to the community the service due from them. He understood that these deficiencies must be remedied. To ensure not only the future success of the School but also the full discharge of its obligations required a development in harmony with these newer ideas. He secured the services of the ablest representatives of such views and started the School on a new era of leadership and supremacy. Thayer was not actuated in this course by any spirit of opportunism. Although brought up in the Common Law and not by nature or by training inclined to extreme sociological views his mind was unusually receptive and, like the Common Law itself, capable of continuous growth and expansion. He could appreciate the force of new theories and had the breadth of outlook carefully to consider and if convinced to adopt such theories even if opposed to his preconceived opinions. It was from full conviction that he used his influence and power as a rejuvenating force.

As to the methods and policy of the School in matters of instruction Thayer had definite and clear-cut views. He knew that true education, especially in the law, consists primarily in stimulating the search for truth and cultivating the spirit of individual and independent analysis and investigations. He knew that these results are best obtained by the play upon the student of minds of differing types. He sought to organize the course of instruction with these ends in view. His ambition was to maintain and raise the standard and to make the Harvard Law School not only a centre, but the centre, of legal education. Mere size was not important. To achieve his purpose required that the material should be of the best, that the School should appeal to and serve, not the greatest number, but the highest type, of students. In the first year of his administration the faculty increased the amount of work required in the second and third years from ten hours a week to twelve and provided that no one could remain after the second year who failed to get for that year at least five per cent above the usual passing mark. These changes caused a falling off in the number of students; but Thayer rightly felt that the improvement in quality was necessary in order successfully to maintain the preeminence of the School and to preserve with large classes that "absorbed and excited interest" which, as he said, had always marked the work of its best scholars. Fully conscious himself of

the exacting requirements of a real legal education and of the paramount importance of such an education adequately to fit a man for a worthy legal career, he deprecated the practice of students engaging in occupations such as created a division of interests. Anyone who recognizes the necessity of elevating the legal profession, of maintaining it as a real profession aiming primarily at efficient service and not at pecuniary gain, will fully sympathize with such a policy, and must feel that in following this course Thayer was rendering service of great value, not only to the School but to the public, a service the more necessary at a time when the practice of the law tends to be regarded only as a desirable means of earning a living, and the bar is in much need of an awakening to its public responsibilities.

A means towards further establishing the reputation of the School and promoting the cause of legal education was the introduction of postgraduate study for the degree of doctor of laws. It is hardly possible that such a course of study should ever be undertaken by numbers commensurate with the cost, but to provide the opportunity and so increase interest in law as a science, to turn out even a small number of real legal scholars, appeared to Thayer clearly a part of the duties of the Law School. Nor can it be doubted that the resulting benefit is worth both to the community and to the School far more than the cost.

Education was not to Thayer mere pedantry. He valued it as an essential part of the equipment of a man prepared to play his part in the world. Not himself a deeply learned black letter lawyer, he could sympathize with those who were, if their interest in such learning did not exclude interest in law as a human science. To him the law was not a bundle of dry husks; it was a part of civilization. He loved it as a living and growing thing. A firm believer in the common law, he was deeply interested in it historically, but more deeply interested in its development and in working out the processes of adjustment required by changing conditions. His devotion to legal principles never blinded him to the necessity of administering justice. In an excellent address last winter before The Law Association of Philadelphia he pointed out the urgent importance of adapting legal methods and procedure to the conditions and needs of modern life. His mind was too active to dwell only on the past, but his judgment was too sound to be

led astray by ill-considered suggestions of changes proposed as panaceas.

Taking his position in the Law School was far from meaning for Thayer a life of academic seclusion. He realized the importance of remaining in close contact with active professional life, even if his intense interest in the affairs of the world relating to law would have permitted any such retirement. While abstaining wholly from practice, he continued to serve on the council of the Boston Bar Association, became a member of the executive committee of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and kept fully abreast of all that was going on in legal circles.

Thayer had perhaps a finer legal mind than any man in his generation. Some might excel him in profound learning as to special subjects, some in subtlety of thought, some in forensic oratory. But none excelled him in the combination of perception, concentration, power of analysis, ability to grasp essential facts, understanding of fundamental principles, openness of mind, readiness to apprehend and accept or combat opposing views, united with capacity to apply all his powers and all his knowledge to the subject before him. His talents were such as assured and entitled him to his success as a practitioner, and his even greater growing success as a teacher and an educator. The same talents would equally have assured his success as a judge had he taken a place upon the bench.

The qualities that endeared Thayer to a wide circle of loving and admiring friends are seldom found coupled with such a high intellectual endowment. A fluent and always interesting talker, he was at the same time an interested listener. His buoyancy of spirit and unusually keen sense of humor rendered him a delightful companion. Devoted to his duties, whatever they might be, he was not absorbed in them to the exclusion of any care for the concerns of others. He responded immediately and fully to any call for sympathy. Capable of biting sarcasm, he seldom if ever employed his weapon to inflict unmerited wounds. Loyal to the core and incapable of a mean or dishonorable act, he deserved and received unbounded confidence. Fond of argument and justly tenacious of his opinions, he was not dogmatic and was singularly open to conviction and ready to acknowledge a mistake. Quick to discern and to scorn any sham, he was tolerant of inexperience

and of honest lack of capacity, while no one was more ready to recognize or more eager to commend ability and merit in another, whether friend or opponent. Always generous, he was happily able to gratify his wish to help others, and unostentatiously extended aid to many. One young man of promise, whose good work he had noticed, was when starting in practice relieved of a serious handicap by Thayer's unsolicited offer to guarantee his office rent for a year. Without the knowledge of his friends he devoted far the greater part of his salary from the Law School to the assistance of needy students and others.

Thayer was a man of strong likes and dislikes and quick to form opinions. But he was by nature just and intellectually honest. He did not allow his prepossessions or his prejudices to govern him or adhere to an opinion once formed if it did not stand the test of analysis. He was unflinching in his judgments of men's acts, but not from any hardness. Many times in his work on the grievance committee of the Bar Association he gave a helping hand to men whose conduct he had justly condemned and assisted them in their efforts to make amends and to reform. His relations to his family were ideal and in the midst of exacting work his domestic life was a constant solace. The intellectual side of his nature never overshadowed the human side. As he matured his character and disposition mellowed; he became increasingly considerate of the feelings of others and any early tendency towards the expression of hasty judgments or towards thoughtless cynicism of speech disappeared. His mind shone as brightly as ever, but with a softer light.

The burden that Thayer assumed in becoming Dean of the Law School was very heavy. His character and ideals made acceptance of the post a pledge of all that was in him, of his very life, to successful performance of its duties. His nature was not of the easy-going sort that can be satisfied by avoiding failure, nor was his temperament such that he could forget his responsibilities and give himself up care free to relaxation. To do all things that the interests of the School required, to leave nothing undone that could benefit the School, to develop his own talents to their fullest extent, were with Thayer paramount obligations to which other considerations were made to give way. Praise was insufficient if he failed to satisfy his own standards. His position made demands upon him