There is, however, historical proof that on at least one prior occasion a President of Harvard was in Dane Hall. John Quincy Adams one day mounted his horse at Quincy and rode over to Cambridge to see President Quincy, who greeted him and pretty soon suggested that they call on Judge Story in his lecture room. The two distinguished visitors were gladly welcomed and were installed by Judge Story, one on each side of him, and he, at their request, proceeded with his lecture. Both of these eminent gentlemen were Stoics. President Quincy went through the New England winters without wearing an overcoat, and Mr. Adams, when at Washington, used to swim in the Potomac and light his own fire in winter and, I believe, read a chapter of the Old Testament and a chapter of the New Testament and wrote in what Henry Clay (who had been tripped up by Mr. Adams on some question of fact) called "that infernal diary of his in which he has put down everything that has happened since the adoption of the Federal Constitution"; and all this before breakfast. As Judge Story proceeded with the rapid and even flow of his lecture, he became aware of a smile upon the faces of his class. A quick glance to either side of him explained it, and, with a cautionary gesture and in a confidential tone, he said: "Young gentlemen, you see before you two melancholy examples of the evil effect of early rising. Always remember that it is of a great deal more importance to be awake after you are up, than simply to get up early."
There is another story which does not relate to the Law School, but which I will venture to tell, both as a picture of early Cambridge days, and as a manifestation of Harvard scholarship under adverse circumstances. There was then no Harvard Bridge and no horse-car line, and, when the culture of Cambridge went to Boston to hear Emerson lecture in the winter evening, the best available vehicle was a large, open, four-horse sleigh, owned and driven by a liveryman named Morse. On one such evening the lecture was over, and the return trip was on and so was a fine, powdery snowstorm. The sleigh proceeded across the Cambridge bridge and then through East Cambridge and so to Cambridge, stopping now on one side of a street to discharge passengers at a small house, and now on the other side at a big house, and so on, and the fine snow kept sifting down and Morse, perched high up in front, was growing more and more ghostly, when out from the sleigh rose the voice of James Russell Lowell, intoning a fragment from Horace, adapted so as to embrace the charioteer of the sleigh: