[Sidenote:  The Lawyer Who “Overworks"]

“After eight months of this, the final examinations came around.  They consumed a full week—­from nine in the morning until five or six at night.  I had no opportunity for review, so I rented a room near the law school to save the time going and coming and reviewed each night the subjects of examination for the following day.

“I did not sleep more than two hours any night in that week.  On Thursday, while bolting a bit of luncheon, a fishbone stuck in my throat.  Fearful of losing the result of my year’s effort, I returned to my work, suffering much pain, and kept at it until Saturday night, when the examinations were concluded.  The next day the surgeon who removed the fishbone said there was no reason why I should not have had ‘a bad case of gangrene.’

“When I look back on that year’s work I don’t see how I stood it.  I don’t see how I kept myself at it, day in, day out, month after month without rest, recreation or relief.  I am sure I could never go through it again, even if I had the courage to undertake it.

“I ranked second in a class of one hundred and eighty in my law examinations, won the second prize for the best graduating thesis, received a complimentary vote for class oratorship, and much to my surprise was soon after offered an assistant superintendency of the public schools by the school board, who knew nothing of my studies and thought my work as a teacher worthy of promotion.

“It was not only the hardest year’s work but the best year’s work I ever did. It exemplifies my invariable experience that the more we want to do the more we can do and the better we can do it.”

[Sidenote:  Excitement and the Hero]

The following is an extract from a letter quoted by Professor James as written by Colonel Baird-Smith after the siege of Delhi in 1857, to the success of which he largely contributed: 

“My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease, between them, had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she got him again.  An attack of scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every joint in my body and covered me all over with scars and livid spots, so that I was unlovely to look upon.  A smart knock on the ankle joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been of necessity neglected under the pressing and insistent calls upon me, and had grown worse and worse until the whole foot below the ankle became a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification.  I insisted, however, on being allowed to use it until the place was taken, mortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible I carried my point and kept up to the last.

“On the day after the assault I had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question for a day or two whether I hadn’t broken my arm at the elbow.  Fortunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me.  To crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea and consumed as much opium as would have done credit to my father-in-law (Thomas De Quincey).