Excerpt from The Life of David Dudley Field For at least a third of a century, said the late Mr. Austin Abbott, David Dudley Field was the most commanding figure at the American bar. This alone would justify, if it did not demand, some record of his long and splendid career, while the traditions of his great arguments still linger in the memories of the survivors of his generation. But he was not merely a figure at the bar, however commanding he was a reformer and reconstructor of the law itself; in which the work that he did cannot be appreciated without some knowl edge of the unsatisfactory state of the law when he entered upon the practice of his profession. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.