But the graduates of Harvard College and Harvard Law School were apt to take quite rapidly the high places of the profession.

That was true then much more than it is now.
There were many persons who graduated before my time or shortly afterward whose high place in the public life of the Commonwealth and of the country was assured before they were thirty years old.

Edward Everett was called to the pulpit of Brattle Street Church at the age of nineteen.

He succeeded in that pulpit Joseph Stevens Buckminster, who was himself settled over that important parish at the age of twenty-one and was a wonderful pulpit orator.

Edward Everett preached a sermon when he was twenty-four years old before a large audience in the Representatives Chamber at Washington which was heard with breathless silence.
Rufus King said it was the best sermon he ever heard, and Harrison Gray Otis was affected to tears.