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"Train, Arthur Cheney
General
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"
Train, Arthur Cheney
Attorney and client -- Fiction; Legal stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
I did not respond, but sat twisting my hat in my hands. Through
the open window the soft damp odors of spring came in and mingled
with the dusty smell of law books. So this was law! It suddenly
struck me that I was taking the loss of over a million dollars very
resignedly. How did I know whether the old boy was telling me the
truth or not? He had drawn the will and got a good fee for it.
Certainly he was not going to admit that there was anything invalid
about it. Why not study law--I might as well do that as anything
--and find out for myself? It was a game worth playing. The stakes
were a million dollars and the forfeit nothing. As I looked around
the little office and at the weazened old barrister before me,
something of the fascination of the law took hold of me.
"I rather think I should like to study law myself," I remarked.
He looked at me out of the corners of his bead-like little eyes.
"And break your gran'ther's will, mebbe?" he inquired slyly.
"If I can," I retorted defiantly.
"That would be better than fighting cocks and frittering your time
away with play actors," said he.
"Mr. Toddleham," I returned, "if I will agree to turn over a new
leaf and give up my present associates, will you continue my
allowance and let me stay on in Cambridge and study law?"
"If you will agree to enter my office and study under my supervision
--yes."
Once more I glanced around the little room. Somehow the smell of
decaying leather did not have the same fascination that it had
exercised a few moments before. The setting sun sinking over the
Probate Office entered the window and lingered on the stern old
face of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason over the fireplace. The birds
twittered gayly amid the branches by the window. Spring called me
to the open air, to the world outside, to the future.
"Give me fifty dollars and my ticket to New York," said I.
It had so happened that at the time of my visit to Mr. Toddleham
my credit, and consequently my ready funds, had become so reduced
that I had only a dollar or two in my pocket. Therefore the check
for fifty dollars that the old gentleman had carefully drawn for
me with his quill pen and then had as carefully sanded over was by
no means inopportune. I took the shore-car back over the Warren
Avenue Bridge, depressed at the thought of leaving the scene of my
first acquaintance with the world and at the same time somewhat
relieved, in spite of myself, by the consoling thought that I should
no longer be worried by the omnipresent anxiety of trying to escape
from duns and Jews.
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