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
Those of my new comrades who were lucky enough to have employment
did not rise in the morning until the neighborhood of twelve o'clock,
and those who had no employment at all followed their example. I
thus found myself adopting of necessity, as it were, the pleasant
practice of sauntering out on Broadway after a one o'clock breakfast,
and of spending most of the afternoon, evening, and following
morning in or about the same locality. We usually went to some
theatrical show on what was known as "paper," and I afterward joined
my actor friends at a restaurant, where we sang songs and told
stories until the gas-lamps were extinguished and gray dawn crept
over the house-tops. Downtown--into the mysterious district of
Wall Street--I did not, as yet, go, and I might still be haunting
the stage entrances of the theatres had it not been for an adventure
in which I was an involuntary participant.
It so happened that among my new acquaintances was a careless,
rattle-brained youth known as Toby Robinson, who in spite of some
histrionic ability was constantly losing his job and always in
debt. He was a smooth-faced, rather stout, good-natured-looking
person, of the sort who is never supposed to have done harm to
anybody. Not long before he had enjoyed a salary of fourteen
dollars per week, but having overslept several times running he
had been discharged for absence from rehearsals. He had reached
the limit of his resources about the time of my arrival in the city
and had been in a most lugubrious frame of mind when I first had
the honor of his acquaintance. Suddenly, however, he appeared one
day with a large roll of bills and entered upon a period of
lubrication and open-handed hospitality, in which we all participated.
During this season of good cheer, as Toby and I were strolling down
Broadway one afternoon, an ugly looking man who had been following
us stepped forward and, touching my friend on the shoulder, said
gruffly:
"The captain wants to see you."
The uttering of these cryptic syllables produced a most extraordinary
effect upon my companion, for he turned deadly pale and the
perspiration collected in beads upon his temples, while he commenced
to wring his hands and bemoan his ill fortune.
"What is the trouble?" I inquired in great solicitude.
The belligerent stranger, however, pushing between us, grasped Toby
firmly by the arm and marched him across the street, while I trailed
behind in the nature of a rear guard. I had already begun to
suspect that the ugly man was none other than an officer of the
law, and visions of myself locked up in jail as a possible accomplice,
although innocent of wrong-doing, hovered in my mind. Toby, giving
every indication of guilt, slouched along beside his captor,
occasionally glancing shamefacedly over his shoulder.
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