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
Peters, however, does not deserve the same credit as another young
fellow of my acquaintance, since in Peters' case necessity was the
parent of his invention; whereas in the other the scheme that led
to success was the offspring of an ingenuity that needed no starvation
to stimulate it into activity.
Baldwin was a youth of about thirty, who had done pretty well at
the bar without giving any evidence of brilliancy and only moderate
financial success. He perceived the obvious fact that the way to
make money at the law is to have money-makers for clients, but he
had no acquaintances with financiers and had no reason to advance
to himself why he should ever hope to receive any business from
such. Reading one day that a certain young attorney he knew had
received a large retainer for bringing an injunction in an important
railroad matter, it occurred to him that, after all, it was merely
chance and nothing else that had sent the business to the other
instead of to himself. "If I'd only known Morgan H. Rogers I might
have had the job myself," thought he.
So he pondered deeply over how he could get to know Mr. Morgan H.
Rogers and at last conceived the idea of pretending that he had
a client who--without disclosing his name for the time being--
desired to create a trust for the benefit of a charity in which
the railroad magnate was much interested. With this excuse he
found no difficulty in securing an interview and making an agreeable
impression. The next step was more difficult.
Finally, having learned through a clerk in the banker's office with
whom he had cultivated an acquaintance that Mr. Morgan H. Rogers
was going to Boston at a certain hour that very afternoon, he donned
his best funeral suit and boarded the same train himself. As he
passed through the drawing-room car he bowed to the great man, who
returned his greeting with the shortness characteristic of him,
and passed on to the smoker, where he ensconced himself in a chair
near the door, depositing on the seat next to him a pile of magazines
and his coat. Half an hour passed and the car filled up, save for
the seat next the young lawyer. Presently the bulky form of Morgan
H. Rogers filled the door-way. He already had a black unlit cigar
in his mouth and he scanned the rows of seats with ill-concealed
disappointment. Then his eye caught the one occupied by our friend's
coat.
"Let me have this seat!" said he abruptly.
"Oh, how are you, Mr. Rogers!" exclaimed the young lawyer.
"Certainly! Let me give you a light."
"Your name's Baldwin, isn't it?" inquired the banker as he took up
a magazine. "Saw you about that trust matter last week, didn't I?"
"Yes," answered Baldwin. "Nothing has occurred in connection with
it since then."
And he returned to his paper without paying any further attention
to his companion. At Bridgeport a telegraph boy rushed into the
car and yelled: "Baldwin! Mr. Baldwin!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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