In the first place, it should be borne in mind, that the lawyers we send to our legislative bodies, are not often the able, nor even the ablest of their class—I speak of them as lawyers only, and not as Orators, or Statesmen, or Scholars. They cannot afford to serve the people for the day wages that your stripling, or blockhead of an attorney, who lives only from hand to mouth, would snap at. He who can have a hundred dollars for a speech, will never make speeches at two or three dollars a-day, in our State Legislatures, nor be satisfied with eight dollars a-day in Congress. And these youngsters of the bar, these third and fourth-rate lawyers, who are held to be good enough for legislators, because they cannot support themselves by their profession, how are they trained for that business? You first hear of them in bar-rooms and bowling-alleys; then at ward-caucuses; and then at all sorts of gatherings where they may be allowed to try themselves and their hearers; and then at conventions or town-meetings: and then, after being defeated half a dozen times, perhaps, till it is acknowledged that if they are not elected, they are ruined forever, they get pushed, head-foremost, into the State Legislature. And once there, what shall they do?—how shall they manage to become notorious—or distinguished? They must contrive to be talked about in the newspapers; to be heartily abused by somebody, that they may heartily be praised by somebody else belonging to another perish. Their names at least will be mentioned, and grow more and more familiar every day to the public ear, until they become a sort of household words; or it may be a rallying cry, by the simple force of repetition, like proverbs, or slang-phrases. “Why do you take every opportunity of calling yourself an _honest_ man?” said a neighbor to another of doubtful reputation. “Why, bless your simple heart,” was the reply, “don’t you see that I am laying a foundation for what is called public opinion; and that after a few years, when my character is fairly established, the origin of the belief will be forgotten.” So with your newspaper characters. Idols of the day—at the end of a few months, at most, they are dust and ashes; and the people begin to wonder at themselves that they should ever have been made such fools of.