¶ I’ve been accused of class hatred because I make statements from time to time that seem to reveal a lack of appreciation for the three learned professions. Granted that I do, it is not the man I criticize—it is the office. Doctors, lawyers and preachers are men, caught in a certain environment, trying to win the world’s plaudits and plunder in a certain way ❦ I may consider the way a mistaken one, but I surely do not hate the man. And the fact that I have hundreds of close friends among the professions proves that I am not entirely misunderstood in this matter ❦ Doctors are men. Lawyers are men. Preachers are men. So, also, are judges. Marxian Socialists are men, and all these are very much like the people with whom they mix and associate ❦ Rogue clients evolve rogue lawyers to do their work; fool patients evolve fool doctors; and superstitious, silly people in the pew secrete a pretentious, punk party in the pulpit. For the man, himself, I have only admiration, respect and love—and sometimes pity. I may despise his business and some of his acts, but how can I hate the man, when I realize that his life is a part of the Great One from which mine is derived? This man may quit his business and take up something else. ¶ The criminal is not wholly a criminal—he is only a criminal at times. Some of his impulses are good, and most of them may be excellent; but one mistaken act will brand him forever as a criminal in the world’s assize. ¶ Under the same conditions, if I were of the same quality and temper, I would have done the same ❦ If I criticize lawyers, doctors and preachers, it is simply because there courses through my veins a quality and kind of corpuscle which fits me eminently for success either as a lawyer, doctor or preacher. “A hair, perhaps, divides the false and true,” says old Omar. ¶ Yes, and I missed becoming a practising physician by a hair. Had I gone into Medicine I would have had a team of bays, a coon driver, and a whisker that would have put all the other doctors in my town to the bad. I have the fingers of a diagnostician, a voice that soothes, a presence that heals. If you didn’t have it, I could convince both myself and you that you had. Then I would have cut into your cosmos to find out who was right—and I would have charged you five hundred dollars for the operation. If I were wrong in my diagnosis, you would never have known the difference, for on occasion I can be discreet. ¶ The law is a game that lures: it isn’t a matter of securing justice—not that. Truth has a secondary place in the practise of law, and only very ignorant folks imagine otherwise. The law is a game, and you play to win. The whole thing is fascinating. It is a clash of wits—mind matching mind. As a lawyer, I would have quibbled you six nights and days together; and I would have been a legal lallapaloosa. ¶ Bill Reedy writes, “We are all touched with the essence of the thing against which we strive.” And Bill is sometimes right.