Reminiscences of Bench and Bar — 1904

Gutenberg Canada, our local wing of the internet publisher of public domain texts, has just published its 100th e-book. For the honour, it’s chosen a 1904 publication, Osgoode Hall – Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar by lawyer James Cleland Hamilton (1836-1907).

For reasons of efficiency and ease of preservation, the Gutenberg folks often provide materials in the simplest of forms, which can make reading them — online or off — something of a chore rather than a pleasure. But I’m happy to say that for this work they’ve confined the html column of text to a readable width (but, unhappily, justified the right margin — never a good idea unless you’ve got a proper type-setting program) and have included some wonderful pictures. One other pleasant surprise was the number of hits I got by searching on the word “library.” It’s not clear that any such search of a contemporary memoir would produce a like number.