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CHAPTER 5
Going to Work
I S A I D the last good-bys to my classmates at the close of our Wabash commencement in June of 1900 and suddenly realized that my student days were over and that a desk in Father's law office was waiting. The commencement admonition— "this day is not the end, it is only the beginning"— needed no underlining. For me it was literally true, and it was with genuine anticipation that I boarded the train for Sullivan.
In my case there was no "cold, cold world" waiting for me outside the warm and friendly college walls. I was going home. There was no intricate problem of adjustment. I was simply going to continue reading law as I had been doing summers and vacations, and I was going to commence practice as soon as the court approved.
Since I was working among people I had known all my life, there could hardly have been a more natural or comfortable way to start. When I see the uncertainties so many young men face today I am most grateful for the friendly field in which my lot was cast. I wanted to be a lawyer above all else, and the opportunity was waiting. I believe opportunities still wait if the desire and determination are strong enough.
Father had had to travel a longer road. Born in 1845 and living on the farm until sixteen, he had attended the Iron City Commercial College at Pittsburgh, and then the high school at Lisbon, Ohio. Finally, ready for college, he entered Mount Union at Alliance, Ohio, meeting all his own expenses by hours of work on the outside. He had been graduated from Mount Union in 1869, taking the highest honors in natural science and mathematics. He taught school from graduation up to 1874, chiefly in Ascension Seminary in Sullivan County. He had read law in the office of Sewell Coulson and was admitted to the Bar in 1875, having purchased an interest in the firm of Buff & Buff— a partnership which he dissolved in 1878.
In that same year, having been elected prosecuting attorney for the Fourteenth Judicial District, and feeling enthusiastic about Indiana and confident of its growing opportunities, he suggested to his brother, Harrison Jefferson Hays— Uncle Jeff to us— that he leave Ohio and join him in the practice of law at Sullivan. That first association of Hays & Hays lasted until 1892. From that year until 1900, Father conducted