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5 U.S. Monthly L. Mag. 72 (1852)
Biographical Letter from Hon. Levinus Monson

handle is hein.journals/usmlwm5 and id is 676 raw text is: UNITED STATES LAW MAGAZINE. walk, those virtues which, while they add a charm to private life, are, after all, the brightest ornaments of the judicial ermine, and, for the want of which, no brilliancy of intellect, no erudition, however pro- found, can compensate. BIOGRAPHICAL LETTER FROM HON. LEVINUS MONSON, OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK. DEAR SI :-I feel greatly honored by your letter, received a while since, in Wvhich you requested my memoir for publication. The life of a lawyer quietly spent mostly in the county of Delaware, N. Y., would hardly be expected to furnish incidents that would be likely to entertain or interest the public. It may more truly be said of him than what the great lexicographer and moralist Doctor Johnson said of himself, vitam continet una dies, or in other words, that his life is as unvaried- as the note of the cuckoo. And whether I have reached the mark proposed by Pliny the younger may perhaps be questionable- since it is not grahted us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived. But encouraged by your flattering invitation I will begin by saying that- Jabez Monson, a respectable farmer, and his wife, Eunice Atwater, resided in Hamden, near New Haven, Ct., and were the parents of a large family, of whom Joshua was a younger son. He married Sarah Booth, who, after becoming the mother of six children, died, when he was again married and raised a large family of children, of whom myself was the eldest. When I was about four years of age my father re- moved to the town of Canaan, in the north part of the State, where, after a long life of hard labor, he died in the possession of a large farm. Here my advantages for education for some years were confined to a common district school, where I made successful progress in the studies -Isually taught there, excelling particularly in reading and spelling- ranches, however humble they may appear to some, in which I have often observed many men of learning and ability to be sadly deficient. While thus engaged, it does not occur to my recollection, that I ever incurred the disapprobation of my teacher, for misbehavior or inat- tention or negligence in my studies. Time elapsed, when my mother received a visit from an aunt of hers residing in New Haven, and her son, then a member of Yale College, who, it would seem, inspired my parents with the ambitious notion of giving their son a collegiate edu- cation. Accordingly, a while after, I went to N. H., and commenced study, at first under the directions of this relative ; afterwards I went to the Latin school in N. I-I., where I had for a fellow student among others, the Hon. R. S. Baldwin, the late distinguished U. S. Senator from Connecticut, and for a while I was under the tuition of one of the profes- sors of Yale, who, on account of ill-health, devoted most of his time in preparing young men for College. Having laid in a sufficient quantity of Latin and Greek, I entered the Freshman class and spent four years