“Kind hearts received me.  All that wealth could bring—­
Refinement, luxury and ease—­was theirs;
But I was proud and felt my poverty,
And gladly mured myself among the books
To master ‘the lawless science of the law.’ 
I plodded through the ponderous commentaries—­
Some musty with the mildew of old age;
And these I found the better for their years,
Like olden wine in cobweb-covered flasks. 
The blush of sunrise found me at my books;
The midnight cock-crow caught me reading still;
And oft my worthy master censured me: 
‘A time for work,’ he said, ’a time for play;
Unbend the bow or else the bow will break.’ 
But when I wearied—­needing sleep and rest—­
A single word seemed whispered in my ear—­
‘Beggar,’ it stung me to redoubled toil. 
I trod the ofttimes mazy labyrinths
Of legal logic—­mined the mountain-mass
Of precedents conflicting—­found the rule,
Then branched into the exceptions; split the hair
Betwixt this case and that—­ran parallels—­
Traced from a ‘leading case’ through many tomes
Back to the first decision on the ‘point,’
And often found a pyramid of law
Built with bad logic on a broken base
Of careless ’dicta;’—­saw how narrow minds
Spun out the web of technicalities
Till common sense and common equity
Were strangled in its meshes.  Here and there
I came upon a broad, unfettered mind
Like Murray’s—­cleaving through the spider-webs
Of shallower brains, and bravely pushing out
Upon the open sea of common sense. 
But such were rare.  The olden precedents—­
Oft stepping-stones of tyranny and wrong—­
Marked easy paths to follow, and they ruled
The course of reason as the iron rails
Rule the swift wheels of the down-thundering train.

“I rose at dawn.  First in this holy book
I read my chapter.  How the happy thought
That my Pauline would read—­the self-same morn
The self-same chapter—­gave the sacred text,
Though I had heard my mother read it oft,
New light and import never seen before. 
For I would ponder over every verse,
Because I felt that she was reading it,
And when I came upon dear promises
Of Christ to man, I read them o’er and o’er,
Till in a holy and mysterious way
They seemed the whisperings of Pauline to me. 
Later I learned to lay up for myself
’Treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust
Corrupteth, and where thieves do not break through,
Nor steal’—­and where my treasures all are laid
My heart is, and my spirit longs to go. 
O friend, if Jesus was but man of man—­
And if indeed his wondrous miracles
Were mythic tales of priestly followers
To chain the brute till Reason came from heaven—­
Yet was his mission unto man divine. 
Man’s pity wounds, but Jesus’ pity heals: 
He gave us balm beyond all earthly balm;
He gave us strength beyond all human strength;
He taught us love above the low desires;
He taught us hope beyond all earthly hope;
He taught us charity wherewith to build
From out the broken walls of barbarism,
The holy temple of the perfect man.