The most important branch of his practice was the searching of titles, and this gave me my early taste for real estate. This department was under the able management of Alfred McIntire, who graciously initiated me into the intricacies of his work. We were then in the midst of a real-estate boom mostly participated in by the recently created middle class. Houses were dealt in almost as freely as merchandise, the only hindrance being the delay occasioned by the searching of titles, which was still confined to the lawyers, as there were no title insurance companies. Contracts would frequently be assigned twice and sometimes thrice, before the great event, “the closing of the title.” Then the various couples involved--the seller, the assignors of the contract, and the final purchaser--would all troop into our offices. The women invariably were the bankers and pulled out their roll of bills and sometimes Savings Bank Books, rarely checks, to consummate the transaction. The moneys invested were seldom taken out of the business, but were mostly the savings of the thrifty housewives. When everything was completed, all adjourned to a neighbouring wine cellar, to be treated to a bottle or two of Rhine wine by the vendor, and frequently I had to go along to represent Kurzman, and as the youngest listen attentively to the real estate stories told with all kinds of embellishments. Kurzman at that time took as his partner George H. Yeaman, who had been a member of Congress from Kentucky and, more recently, American Minister to Denmark, and subsequently became a lecturer at the Columbia Law School. His native Southern chivalry had been polished by his experience at the Danish court; he was a man of splendid education and wide culture. I was fortunate in being chosen to take his dictation. I was amused in 1916 when, as Ambassador, I visited Dr. Maurice Francis Egan at our Legation in Copenhagen, and looked through the records made by Yeaman in 1865 while he was the head of that Legation. My private life I continued to order along the lines that I had laid down for myself. I would get up at 6 A. M. and go to Central Park. Then if I had not exercised at home, I would take a long walk; otherwise I would sit under the trees and read. The hour that the horse car consumed in wending its way from the Park to Duane Street I would devote to my books, and I was so thrifty that I did not even buy a newspaper. I kept myself so busy that I did not even see one, until, going home for the night, I unfolded and read such as had been left in Kurzman’s office during the day. Thrift was, indeed, a necessary virtue. I had left commerce for the law at something of a sacrifice: in 1872, my accounts, which I kept scrupulously all this while, bear evidence of how careful I had to be of my scanty income. “Carfare, 10 cts.; Dinner, 15 cts.; Sundries, 2 cts.” That is a typical day’s expenditure.