The consequences of his three years of novel-reading were such a serious matter to him that he was afraid to go and hear the result of the final examinations but remained in his room until a friend came to tell him that he was one of the first five in his class in his average for the entire course. This is the other side of Reed, "the lazy."
Besides this success, his oration on "The Fear of Death" won the first prize for English composition. It was in delivering it that Mr. Reed felt the first emotions of the orator, when every eye in the audience was riveted upon him, and when the profound silence that prevailed told the deep interest which his words aroused. Of the year's work which won for him the privilege of delivering it on that Commencement Day, thirty-three years ago, Mr. Reed says that it was the hardest of his life, and the only time he has forced himself up to his full limit for so long a period.
Graduation from college was not by any means the end of the struggle for the young man. Money was still lacking, and to get it he engaged in school-teaching, an occupation which he had already followed during two terms, and in vacation times. He taught at first for twenty dollars a month, "boarding round," and the highest pay he ever received as a teacher was forty-five dollars a month. His old comrades delight in telling an incident of his school-teaching days. He once found it necessary to chastise a boy who was about his own age, although he had been cautioned against whipping, by the members of the committee of the district, unless he first referred the case to them. But Reed was Reed even in those days. The committee having failed to sustain him in the past, in this instance he decided that some one must be master at school, and that he would be that some one. Accordingly, the refractory young man was thrashed, after an exciting quarter of an hour--a close victory, which one pound more avoirdupois might have decided against the teacher.
Mr. Reed soon gave up school-teaching, and, thinking that a young man would have a better chance out West, he went to California. Judge Wallace, afterwards Chief Justice of California, examined Reed for admission to the bar. It was in '63, during the civil war, when the Legal Tender Act was much discussed in California, where a gold basis was still maintained, that Wallace, whose office adjoined the one where Reed was studying, happened in one day and said, "Mr. Reed, I understand you want to be admitted to the bar. Have you studied law?" "Yes, sir, I studied law in Maine while teaching." "Well," said Wallace, "I have one question to ask. Is the Legal Tender Act constitutional?" "Yes," said Reed. "You shall be admitted to the bar," said Wallace. "Tom Bodley [a deputy sheriff, who had legal aspirations] was asked the same question, and he said 'no.' We will admit you both, for anybody who can answer off-hand a question like that ought to practise law in this country."