It must have been sometime in the winter or spring of 1891 that I first saw him. I had just been elected to the legislature. It was the famous Reform Session, you will remember, that proved to be of such benefit to stenographers and space writers. During the six months that general assembly lasted I lived at the St. James hotel. It is probable that I first saw the boy behind the counter of the cigar stand in the lobby of the hotel. It is probable that I had seen and spoken to him many times before I gave him any especial notice. What first arrested my attention was a law book. I had stopped at the cigar stand one evening after dinner to get some cigars, and as he rose to attend upon my wants, he took the book from his lap and laid it down upon the counter. While he was under the counter getting out a box of the brand I wished--for I never relish, somehow, cigars taken from a show case--I turned the book over and idly looked at its title. I remember very well that it was Reeves’ _History of the English Law_. It struck me as rather odd that a boy behind a cigar stand should be reading such a book. It was not a book that law students, in my state, at any rate, generally read. I know that I never read it (through) and probably never shall read it, although it is, of course, a wise and ancient book. I asked him why he read it. “Why,” he said, “I’m studying law!” As I lighted a cigar, I looked at the boy. He was tall and overgrown, and thin with his overgrowth, with spare wrists that thrust themselves out of frayed cuffs. His face was sallow, and he was not good to look upon. His clothes were worn bare to the threads. He had every appearance of being poor, almost hungry. I fancy I disliked him. “When do you expect to be admitted?” I asked casually. “Oh,” he replied, blithely enough, “in two or three years. Then I go into politics.” This, I have said, was in 1891. If anything impressed me, it was the hopelessness of it all. In 1893, early in the summer, I went down to the capital to argue a case at the June term of the supreme court. In the evening, after a hard day in court, I strolled out Lafayette Street to mollify my nerves. Toward the edge of the town I saw a thin youth walking with a girl. The girl wore a white dress. The evening was balmy. The moon was shining. The lilacs were in bloom, and their odor was on the air. As we passed each other, the youth’s appearance struck me as familiar. At the time I thought that he was the boy who used to tend the cigar stand in the St. James, and read Reeves’ _History of the English Law_, whom I had naturally forgotten.