Society is like an immense swarm of black bees settled on a honey-pot. The leaders, who flew there first, are at the top, gorged and distended. Round, beneath and on them crawl thousands of others thirsting to feed on the sweet, liquid gold. The pot is covered with them, layer on layer--buzzing hungrily; eager to get as near as possible to the honey, even if they may not taste it. A drop falls on one and a hundred fly on him and lick it off. The air is alive with those who are circling about waiting for an advantageous chance to wedge in between their comrades. They will, with one accord, sting to death any hapless creature who draws near. * * * * * Frankly I should not be enough of a man to say these things if my identity were disclosed, however much they ought to be said. Neither should I make the confessions concerning my own career that are to follow; for, though they may evidence a certain shrewdness on my own part, I do not altogether feel that they are to my credit. When my wife and I first came to New York our aims and ideals were simple enough. I had letters to the head of a rather well-known firm on Wall Street and soon found myself its managing clerk at one hundred dollars a month. The business transacted in the office was big business--corporation work, the handling of large estates, and so on. During three years I was practically in charge of and responsible for the details of their litigations; the net profit divided by the two actual members of the firm was about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The gross was about one hundred and eighty thousand, of which twenty thousand went to defray the regular office expenses--including rent, stenographers and ordinary law clerks--while ten thousand was divided among the three men who actually did most of the work. The first of these was a highly trained lawyer about forty-five years of age, who could handle anything from a dog-license matter before a police justice to the argument of a rebate case in the United States Supreme Court. He was paid forty-five hundred dollars a year and was glad to get it. He was the active man of the office. The second man received thirty-five hundred dollars, and for that sum furnished all the special knowledge needed in drafting railroad mortgages and intricate legal documents of all sorts. The third was a chap of about thirty who tried the smaller cases and ran the less important corporations. The two heads of the firm devoted most of their time to mixing with bankers, railroad officials and politicians, and spent comparatively little of it at the office; but they got the business--somehow. I suppose they found it because they went out after it. It was doubtless quite legitimate. Somebody must track down the game before the hunter can do the shooting. At any rate they managed to find plenty of it and furnished the work for the other lawyers to do.