In the spring of 1898--I remember the time, not, of course, because it has anything to do with the boy but because we were then engaged in the track elevation cases--I went over to the Gregory Building one morning to see Judge Goodman, in order to get him to consent to the Updegraff case going over the term. That was a case which involved the doctrine of merger, and I needed some additional time for preparation. As I entered the offices of Goodman, Peck, Gilmore and Eckhart, I turned to the office boy, who was sitting near the door at the futile little desk all office boys occupy, and on which they scribble mysterious things, to ask whether the judge was in. When I spoke to the boy he looked up and smiled and called me by name. He seemed to be, for some reason, glad to see me, as if I had been some one from home. In fact, he said: “Have you been down lately?” I examined him quite attentively for an instant. He had half risen from his chair, and stood, or hung, in an awkward attitude over his desk. Presently I recognized him as the boy who used to tend the cigar stand in the hotel at the state capital, and read Reeves’ _History of the English Law_. I asked him what he was doing in the city. “Why,” he said, in apparent surprise at my question, “I’m practising law!” His eyes, in his pale face, dilated with a childish pride, until they were large and round and brilliant. He had drawn himself quite erect, and now he waved his hand toward the wall, and there I saw, in a new oak frame, the old familiar law license the supreme court issues to poor devils with illusions. There it was, bearing the seal of the court and the signatures of the seven justices. I read the boy’s name, written on the imitation parchment. It was the first time I had ever known what he called himself. I was amused by his having had his license framed. “So you are in Judge Goodman’s office, are you?” I said, rather ineptly, to be sure, but merely to have something to say. He made the obvious reply, and spoke of Judge Goodman’s kindness to him. I asked him how he was getting along. “Well,” he replied, “rather slowly, of course--just at first, you know. But then I think if I can stick it out a while--say five or six years--I’ll be all right.” I kept on looking at the old familiar law license, and thinking of my own. I have not seen it for years. I think my wife has it somewhere, in a tin tube with the diplomas and our marriage certificate and her father’s discharge from the army and other family charters, if it is not lost. Then--for I felt that I should say something--I asked him how everybody was in the capital. “I don’t get down any more,” he said; “it costs, you know.”