For exercise, my brother-in-law had given me a small gray saddle horse, very sprightly and strong. I usually rode him four or five nights a week, for an hour or two hours, about the suburbs of the city and lonely ways of the neighborhood, meanwhile amusing myself by recalling and reciting snatches of poetry, especially from Byron, and Moore, whom I much admired, and sometimes from Pope and Scott.
Commencing in the early autumn of 1838, this continued till late in the spring of 1839. By this time, I had finished my Blackstone, and was told to read “Kent's Commentaries for American law.” I had lighted upon a treatise published in Rhode Island upon the Constitution of the United States, apparently a text-book for schools. I began by committing to memory the Constitution. Then I read the author's comments upon it, which learning has stood me in good stead ever since. I also read with eagerness “Stephens on pleading,” one of the most delightful and profitable books I ever studied.
Mr. Smith had a considerable number of tenement buildings in his charge, and about this time found it necessary to eject certain defaulting tenants by legal process. This part of his business he turned over to me, acting in his name, and at the same time allowed me the proceeds in the shape of costs, and sometimes small fees for my work. That brought me to practice in the police court, which was then presided over by the Hon. Joseph Locke. Judge Locke required all the proceedings of the court to be conducted with as much regularity and observance of forms and rules of law as were the proceedings of any other court. I now know what I did not then, that he was a lawyer fit to have presided even in the Supreme Court. He made the young gentlemen who generally practiced before him know what the law applicable in their cases was. This was a good fortune, for I looked up the law in regard to my cases, and studied each point with great avidity, so that I substantially began the study of law then. I soon became proficient in the law of evidence, especially in the rules of pleading in criminal process. My studies, therefore, lasted frequently into the night, and I often called for my horse at the stable for a ride, after the hour of twelve had struck.
