Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and RetrospectiveStevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
History
Something of Men I Have Known: With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective
Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing)
United States -- Biography; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933
There are persons yet in life, who, practically at least, hold with
Aaron Burr, that "law is that which is boldly asserted and plausibly
maintained," and that lawyers, like the Roman augurs of old, always
smile when they meet one another on the street. The by no means
exalted opinion of two men as to "our noble profession" will appear
from the following.
A few days after Knott was admitted to the bar, he was sitting
alone in his office, waiting for clients, when a one-gallowsed,
awkward-looking fellow from the "brush" walked in without ceremony,
dropped into the only vacant chair, and inquired: "Air you a
lawyer, mister?" Assuming the manner of one of the regulars, Knott
unhesitatingly answered that he was. "Well," said the visitor, "I
thought I would drap in and git you to fetch a few suits for me."
Picking up his pen with the air of a man with whom suing people
was an everyday, matter-of-course sort of affair, Knott said: "Who
did you wish to sue?" To which--with a prolonged yawn--the
prospective client drawled out: "I ain't particular, Mister, I
jest thought I'd get you to pick out a few skerry fellows _that
would complemise easy!"_
The remaining incident is an experience of my own, when, at the
age of twenty-two, I had hung out my sign in the then county-seat of
Old Woodford.
My first client had retained me to obtain a divorce because of
abandonment during the two years last past by the sometime partner
of his joys and sorrows. The bill for divorce was duly filed; but
on "the coming in of the answer," a continuance of the suit, for
cause shown, was granted to the defendant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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