Opening paragraphs........

Learned Hand, Judge, United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit, 1924-1961

On January 27, 1872, a cold winter day, a second and last child was born to Lydia and Samuel Hand of 224 State Street in Albany, New York.  The Hands named their only son Billings Learned Hand.  Late in life, Hand would recall Albany as "a hick town up the river," but the Albany boosters of his youth would have challenged that description.  After all, Albany, less that 150 miles from New York City, was the state's capital; after all, its population of about seventy thousand in 1870 made it the fourth largest city in the state, the twentieth largest in the nation; after all, there was reason to hope that the post-Civil War industrial boom would spur growth in Albany as it was doing elsewhere.  At first, the local hopes seemed vindicated:  as its population rose to ninety thousand by 1880, Albany's rate of growth kept pace with New York City's, Buffalo's, and Boston's.  Yet soon growth ground to a halt; during the 1890's, sleepy Albany's population actually shrank; by 1900, it dropped from being America's twentieth largest city to only its fortieth.
-Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge