Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1883-04-04
The Story of a Vic.
from the Boston Advertiser.

From the Boston Advertiser.
In 1887 Charles Sumner, being then
twenty-six years old, and fresh from his
law studies during his Harvard course,
and two years practice In Boston, went
abroad for four years of travel. While i'll
England he was presented TO Lord
Brougham, with whom he became
great favorite. In February 1889 he
wrote to a friend as follows "Lord
Brougham has given me lis full-bottom
d-chancellor Wig, In which he made
his great speech on the reform bill
Such a wig costs twelve guineas, and
then the associations of i'll In America
it will be like Rabelais' gown" The wig
was sent home by Sumner to Judge
Story, to whom he wrote from Germany
in 1910, saying: 81 am glad you have
Brougham's wig. [ always wished it to
60 to the law school. Put it in a case
and preserve it," This request was
complied with, and the wig became one
of tie penates of the school. But the
biennial migrations of students, the
designations Of professors, and the re-
peated changes in librarians soon re-
moved those who knew the value of the
relic, and the wig, in It's paste-board
box, worked it's way to the obscurity of
the law-school garnet.
Years passed; the death of Brougham
In 1868 revived the faded memories of
his eloquence, his varied learning and
his wonderful career; biographer of
Sumner stumbled on a clue to the exis-
tence of the wig, and sought it at the
Cambridge school. None of The then
present generation Of students had ever
heard of 1t. The librarian remembered
dimly having found a wig in dust
covered box in the garrett, but knew
nothing of its origin. A younger mem
Der of the faculty confessed TO having
worn it in former student days while sit
ting as presiding justice III moot court
trials, but of its present whereabouts
none could tell. Further inquiry proved
that the law-school garnet had been
cleared of rubbish several summers pre-
vious, and that the wig in its dusty box
had migrated to a store-room IN Harvard
Hall. To old Harvard, then, the search
er went and encountered an aged en-
ploye of the college who presided over
the buildings in the yard. Yes, he re-
membered wig in a pasteboard box
which had kicked about for some time
and had tnen been turned over to one of
his assistants. The assistant was sum-
moned and after long effort recalled to
his memory the fact that he had given
an old wig to his little children to play
with, and that they having exhausted
it's attractiveness 1t had gone into the
ash heap, and one summer afternoon had
been carted across Holmes field to the
hollow by the willows, and dumped into
the mass of earth and ashes which were
then being graded to form the ground
upon which now stands the north. goal
of the football field.
Further search was useless, and the
wig was left to its fate, but the future
students of the English law, as they fin
ger the pages of Meeson and Welsby,
or Barnewall and Cresswel, and gaze
northward from the windows Of the new
law building, may mediate on the
mutability OF matter and the fall of LORD
Brougham's wig from the pinnacle OF
the woolsack to the ash-heaps of Holmes
field