Produced by an anonymous volunteer Transcriber's note: Quotation marks have been added to block quotes set in smaller type. The text of signs and business cards was set in box rules, which have been omitted. Typographical errors have been corrected; 19th-century spellings have been retained. LoC call number: PS3539.R15C7 THE CONFESSIONS OF ARTEMAS QUIBBLE BEING THE INGENUOUS AND UNVARNISHED HISTORY OF ARTEMAS QUIBBLE, ESQUIRE, ONE-TIME PRACTITIONER IN THE NEW YORK CRIMINAL COURTS, TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIVERS WILES, TRICKS, SOPHISTRIES, TECHNICALITIES, AND SUNDRY ARTIFICES OF HIMSELF AND OTHERS OF THE FRATERNITY, COMMONLY YCLEPT "SHYSTERS" OR "SHYSTER LAWYERS," AS EDITED BY ARTHUR TRAIN FORMERLY ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY NEW YORK COUNTY ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PRINTED AT THE SCRIBNER PRESS NEW YORK, U.S.A. ILLUSTRATIONS [omitted] THE CONFESSIONS OF ARTEMAS QUIBBLE CHAPTER I I was born in the town in Lynn, Massachusetts, upon the twenty- second day of February, in the year 1855. Unlike most writers of similar memoirs, I shall cast no aspersions upon the indigent by stating that my parents were poor but honest. They were poor _and_ honest, as indeed, so far as I have been able to ascertain, have been all the Quibbles since the founder of the family came over on the good ship _Susan and Ellen_ in 1635, and, after marrying a lady's maid who had been his fellow passenger, settled in the township of Weston, built a mill, and divided his time equally between selling rum to the Indians and rearing a numerous progeny. My father, the Reverend Ezra Quibble, was, to be sure, poor enough. The salary that he received as pastor of his church was meagre to the degree of necessitating my wearing his over-worn and discarded clerical vestments, which to some extent may account for my otherwise inexplicable distaste for things ecclesiastical. My mother was poor, after wedlock, owing to the eccentricity of a parent who was so inexorably opposed to religion that he cut her off with a shilling upon her marriage to my father. Before this she had had and done what she chose, as was fitting for a daughter of a substantial citizen who had made a fortune in shoe leather.