CHAPTER IX.
LIFE IN WORCESTER After leaving college I studied for a year in my brother's office in Concord, then for two years at the Harvard Law School, and afterward for four months in the office of Judge Benjamin F.Thomas in Worcester.

I was led to choose Worcester as a place to live in chiefly for the reason that that city and county were the stronghold of the new Anti-Slavery Party, to which cause I was devoted with all my heart and soul.

I have never regretted the choice, and have spent my life there, except when in Washington, for considerably more than half a century.

In that time Worcester has grown from a city of fifteen thousand to a city of one hundred and thirty thousand people.

I can conceive of no life more delightful for a man of public spirit than to belong to a community like that which combines the youth and vigor and ambition of a western city with the refinement and conveniences, and the pride in a noble history, of an old American community.