We pretend to invoke dear old Experience as though he were a god, fondly imagining that an honest impulse demands that we appeal to him as an arbiter. But when we have submitted our case and listened to his verdict, we express our thanks and go away and do exactly as we please. We all carry our troubles to the friends whose sympathy we know outweighs their wisdom. We want them to pat us on the back and tell us that we are doing exactly right. If by any chance they are bold enough to give us an honest judgment based on real convictions, we depart with a grievance, our confidence shaken. We lean upon our friends, to be sure; but we rely upon them to bail us out after the forts of folly have crashed about our ears and we pine in the donjon, rather than on their advice that might possibly have preserved us on the right side of the barricade. And I may note here, that of all the offices that man may undertake, that of the frank friend is the most thankless. The frank friend! It is he who told you yesterday that you were looking wretchedly ill. Doctor Experience had warned _him_; and he felt it to be his duty to stop _you_ in your headlong plunge. To-morrow he will drop in to tell you in gentle terms that your latest poem is--well, he hates to say it--but he fears it isn’t up to your old mark! The frank friend, you may remember, is Doctor Experience’s favorite pupil. We are all trying to square wisdom with our own aims and errors. Professional men, whose business is the giving of advice, are fully aware of this. Death is the only arbiter who can enforce his own writs, and it is not for man to speak a final word on any matter. I was brought up to have an immense respect--reverence, even--for law. It seemed to me in my youth to embody a tremendous philosophy. Here, I used to say, as I pondered opinion and precedent,--here is the very flower and fruit of the wisdom of the ages. I little dreamed that both sides of every case may be supported by authorities of equal dignity. Imagine my bewilderment when I found that a case which is likely to prove weak before one infallible judge may be shifted with little trouble to another, equally infallible, but with views known to be friendly to the cause in question. I sojourned for a time in a judicial circuit where there was considerable traveling to be done by the court and bar. The lawyer who was most enterprising in securing a sleeping-car stateroom wherein to play poker--discreetly and not too successfully--with the judge, was commonly supposed to have the best chance of winning his cases. Our neighbors’ failures are really of no use to us. “No Admittance” and “Paint” are not accepted by the curious world as warnings, but as invitations.