Young Fellows

This year Professor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard Law School did for his good old friend Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the U. S. Supreme Court what he has done for him many times before: looked over the School's graduating class, picked a brilliant, personable man to be Justice Holmes's secretary for one year. The choice became known last week: Horace Chapman Rose, Princeton graduate (1928), of Columbus, Ohio, who next autumn will go to Washington, receive from the U. S. Government $3,000 for a year's work and follow in the footsteps of 25 men who say they have "sat for a year at the feet of an Olympian."

Ever since Justice Holmes was appointed to the bench in 1902 he has taken a secretary every year from his alma mater. Many of them have become eminent. Charles K. Poe, first secretary, who held the position for four years, is now a bank attorney in Seattle, Wash. George Leslie Harrison is Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Others are Harvey H. Bundy of Boston, recently appointed an Assistant Secretary of State; Irving S. Olds of Manhattan; Stanley Clarke, president of St. Louis Public Service Co.; Stanley Morrison, law professor at Stanford University; Chauncey Balknap of Manhattan; Vice President James Mount Nicely of Guaranty Trust Co.; Walter Barton Leach Jr., assistant professor at Harvard Law School.

Once it was customary for the secretary to live in the "House of Truth," a Washington boarding house where many a bright young Liberal -- Professor Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann. Harold Laski -- gained political and legalistic experience. All the secretaries have worked at the big mahogany desk which belonged to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., in a dark, book-lined room between the Justice's bedroom and his office. "Young fellow!" he calls out when there is work to be done. Another name for the secretary is "corporate sole" (a corporation consisting in one person, who in this case has his own reputation to make, his own duties to perform). Before Mrs. Holmes died (in 1929) the Young Fellow was expected to be present in a social capacity for the Monday "at homes." In the evening Mrs. Holmes would sometimes read to her husband while he played solitaire. Now it is the Young Fellow who reads. When Justice Holmes was stronger there was daily at 5 p. m. a 40-minute walk, Young Fellow and tall, fine old jurist flourishing his Irish blackthorn stick, talking of all things, drawing out his young protegee.

Last March Justice Holmes celebrated his 90th birthday with a radio speech (TIME, March 16). Ten years ago Mrs. Holmes arranged a birthday surprise party for him, brought together for the first time all the secretaries. He was pleased. This year with Mrs. Holmes gone, a birthday dinner after the radio broadcast would have taxed his strength. The Young Fellows came a week later, went together to his house. All had joined in commissioning Artist Charles Hopkinson to paint his portrait this summer at his home at Beverly Farms, Mass. They hope to have the painting hung in the Supreme Court of the U.S.

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