Justice Holmes's Advice
to a Law Student

J. D. S. ARMSTRONG

n March 1, 1899, Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
I of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wrote
a letter from the Court House in Boston to one P. E.
Mason, Esq., in Carthage, Illinois. At that time Holmes had
already published his landmark treatise. The Common Law, which
alone would have immortalized him in legal circles. He was five
months away from becoming Chief Justice of Massachusetts and
three and a half years from appointment to the Supreme Court of
the United States.

Whoever Mr. Mason may have been, he left no trace behind in
the standard annals of organized activity. We can infer from
Holmes's letter, the recent gift of Stuart Schimmel to the Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, that in 1899 P. E. Mason was about
to embark on the study of law, that he had written Holmes a letter
asking his advice on how best to go about it, and that the letter's
tone had pleased the great man and moved him to respond in con¬
siderable detail.

Holmes's own legal education had commenced with three terms
at Harvard Law School. Although his studies there failed to con¬
vince him that his real calling was the law rather than philosophy,
he graduated in 1866 and was admitted to practice in Boston the
following year. The next fifteen years were to constitute the real
legal education of Holmes as he combined intensive private study,
editorship of the American Law Review, and lecturing at Harvard
with an active practice. The fruit of his labors. The Common Law,
was published in 1881 before he turned forty. A professorship at
Harvard ensued, followed rapidly by his appointment to the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.