[1]: 127  For one year he remained a graduate student, then traveled in Europe, and despite an offer to teach at Yale University, he turned to the law profession.

Ill health compelled him to rest, and as a result of travel to the Northwest he moved to Winona, Minnesota, in October 1884.

There he formed a partnership with Thomas Wilson, former chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he practiced law until 1893.

He found great joy, as solicitor general, in the fact that he could act solely as lawyer, rather than counsel, and for the whole country rather than for a special interest.

He married twice; first on September 7, 1887, to Louisa Bennett Wilson of Winona, Minnesota, who died on December 20, 1897; and second in 1906, to Charlotte Josephine Lewis of Detroit, who survived him after his death, aged 51.