book of about 500 pages, then graciously consented to the publication
of two oversized volumes, but balked at printing five. The works of a
number of my heroes and some of my friends had to be sacrificed. The
opinions finally selected were chosen because of the dilemmas they pre-
sent and because they deal with problems of more immediate interest
than those omitted, some of which were grander in style and of greater
importance historically and in the development of the law.

In selecting the Daniel Webster summation, the one of greatest his-
torical importance--made in the Dartmouth College case--was again re-
jected in favor of one less significant; but I find the plea included--
made to the jury in the White Murder Case--better reasoned and more
artfully and interestingly developed.

Parenthetically, I believe Webster has been much libeled in the gen-
eral reports of his argument to the Supreme Court in the Dartmouth
College Case. According to legend, the climax of his speech was the
completely inane statement, "It is, as I have said, a small college, yet
there are those who love it." The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes
all present as so affected by that remark that even Chief Justice John
Marshall's "cheek expanded with emotion and his eyes suffused with
tears." Beveridge in his The Life of John Marshallreports the incident
in virtually the same language, having taken it from the same inaccurate
source. I have heard it repeated countless times. If ever the line was
uttered by Webster--and I doubt that it was--he had the good sense
to delete it from his own copy of the speech.

Excepting The Ring and the Book, which would require a separate
volume, the inclusion of the single poem "Law Like Love" in this col-
lection is not due to want of space but to ignorance of any other
worthy of inclusion. I have read a very great deal of poetry about law
and lawyers, and almost all of it is terrible.

No generalization can be made about the law in fiction or the works
of fiction included here. The law deals with every aspect of life, and the
literature about the law deals with every subject, condition and circum-
stance and in almost every conceivable manner. The word "anthology"
is derived from the Greek anthos (flower) and legein (to gather).
These books are intended as an anthology in the sense that the origin of
the word suggests. It was my intent to present a gathering or collection
of writing centered in the law, each of such excellence that it may be
described as literature.

EPHRAIM LONDON

-xii-