But I preferred my profession.
I never had any desire or taste for executive office, and I doubt if I had much capacity for it.
When Charles Allen declined reelection to Congress, in 1852, I have no doubt I could have succeeded him if I had been willing, although I was but twenty-six years old, only a year past the Constitutional age.
As I found myself getting a respectable place in the profession my early ambitions were so far changed and expanded that I hoped I might some day be appointed to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that there could be no more delightful life for a man competent to the service than one spent in discussing with the admirable lawyers, who have always adorned that Bench, the great questions of jurisprudence, involving the rights of citizens, and the welfare of the Commonwealth, and helping to settle them by authority.

This ambition was also disappointed.

I have twice received the offer of a seat on that Bench, under circumstances which rendered it out of the question that I should accept it, although on both occasions I longed exceedingly to do so.
Shortly after I was admitted to the Bar, good fortune brought me at once into the largest practice in the great County of Worcester, although that Bar had always been, before and since, one of the ablest in the country.

Judge Emory Washburn, afterward Governor and Professor of Law at Harvard, and writer on jurisprudence, had the largest practice in the Commonwealth, west of Boston, and I suppose with one exception, the largest in the Commonwealth outside of Boston.