But the voluble Harris, whose drink had made him more than usually impudent, remarked further:-- "Say, Jack! ain't you learned yet that we don't pattern after the German Emperor here in Chicago? Better comb out your mustache, or they'll be taking you for some foreign guy." Hart merely turned his back on Harris, and listened with exaggerated interest to what a large, heavy man, with a boy's smooth face, was saying:-- "He was of no special 'count in college,--a kind of second-rate hustler, you know. But, my heavens! Since he struck this town, he's got in his work. I don't believe he knows enough law to last him over night. But he knows how to make the right men think he does. He started in to work for those Selinas Mills people,--damage suits and collecting. Here in less than five years he's drawing the papers for the consolidation of all the paper-mills in the country!" "Who's that, Billy?" Hart asked. "Leverett, Joe Leverett. He was Yale '89, and at the law school with me." "He must have the right stuff in him, all the same," commented one man. "I don't know about that!" the first speaker retorted. "Some kind of stuff, of course. But I said he was no lawyer, and never will be, and I repeat it. And what's more, half the men who are earning the big money in law here in Chicago don't know enough law to try a case properly." "That's so," assented one man. "Same thing in medicine." "Oh, it's the same all over." The men about the card-table launched out into a heated discussion of the one great topic of modern life--Success. The game of poker finally closed, and the players joined in the conversation. Fresh drinks were ordered, and cigars were passed about. The theme caught the man most eager to go home, and fired the brain most fagged. "The pity of it, too," said the large man called Billy, dominating the room with his deep voice and deliberate speech,--"the pity of it is that it ruins the professions. You can see it right here in Chicago. Who cares for fine professional work, if it don't bring in the stuff? Yes, look at our courts! look at our doctors! And look at our buildings. It's money every time. The professions have been commercialized." "Oh, Billy!" exclaimed Ben Harris. "Is this a commencement oration you are giving us?" A quiet voice broke in from behind the circle:--