Our clients consisted, for the most part, of three clearly defined classes of persons: Criminals, their victims, and persons involved in marital or quasi-marital difficulties. These last furnished by far the most interesting quota of our business, and, did not professional confidence seal my lips, I could recount numerous entertaining anecdotes concerning some of what are usually regarded as New York's most respectable, not to say straight-laced, households. A family skeleton is the criminal lawyer's strongest ally. Once you can locate him and drag him forth you have but to rattle his bones ever so little and the paternal bank account is at your mercy. New York is prolific of skeletons of this generic character, and Gottlieb had a magnificent collection. When naught else was doing we used to stir them up and revive business. Over this feature of the firm's activities I feel obliged, however, from a natural feeling of delicacy, to draw a veil. Our function usually consisted in offering to see to it that a certain proposed action, based on certain injudicious letters, should be discontinued upon the payment of a certain specified sum of money. These sums ranged in amount from five to twenty thousand dollars, of which we retained only one-half. I understand that some lawyers make more than this percentage, but for such I have only contempt. A member of a learned and honorable profession should be scrupulous in his conduct, and to keep for one's self more than half the money recovered for a client seems to me to be bordering on the unethical. But perhaps I am hypersqueamish.