As my apprenticeship advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants of
our city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who
were separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the
classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed.
Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair
took me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the city
penned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who had
spent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented
to the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch
the eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazed
forth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with
scrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I
beheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly
and inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all,
must be practical men. I came to know the justices of these police
courts, as well as other judges. And underlying my acquaintance with all
of them was the knowledge--though not on the threshold of my
consciousness--that they depended for their living, every man of them,
those who were appointed and those who were elected, upon a political
organization which derived its sustenance from the element whence came
our clients. Thus by degrees the sense of belonging to a special
priesthood had grown on me.
I recall an experience with that same Mr. Nathan. Weill, the wholesale
grocer of whose commerce with the City Hall my Cousin Robert Breck had so
bitterly complained. Late one afternoon Mr. Weill's carriage ran over a
child on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. The
parents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This was
late in the afternoon, and I was alone in the office when the telephone
rang. Hurrying to the police station, I found Mr. Weill in a state of
excitement and abject fear, for an ugly crowd had gathered outside.
"Could not Mr. Watling or Mr. Fowndes come?" demanded the grocer.
With an inner contempt for the layman's state of mind on such occasions I
assured him of my competency to handle the case. He was impressed, I
think, by the sergeant's deference, who knew what it meant to have such
an office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecuting
attorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a release
for the coachman on his own recognizance, one of many signed in blank and
left there by the justice for privileged cases. The coachman was hustled
out by a back door, and the crowd dispersed.
The next morning, while a score or more of delinquents sat in the anxious
seats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me precedence. And Mr. Weill,
with a sigh of relief, paid his fine.
"Mr. Paret, is it?" he asked, as we stood together for a moment on the
sidewalk outside the court. "You have managed this well. I will
remember."
He was sued, of course. When he came to the office he insisted on
discussing the case with Mr. Watling, who sent for me.
"That is a bright young man," Mr. Weill declared, shaking my hand. "He
will get on."
"Some day," said Mr. Watling, "he may save you a lot of money, Weill."
"When my friend Mr. Watling is United States Senator,--eh?"
Mr. Watling laughed. "Before that, I hope. I advise you to compromise
this suit, Weill," he added. "How would a thousand dollars strike you?
I've had Paret look up the case, and he tells me the little girl has had
to have an operation."
"A thousand dollars!" cried the grocer. "What right have these people to
let their children play on the streets? It's an outrage."
"Where else have the children to play?" Mr. Watling touched his arm.
"Weill," he said gently, "suppose it had been your little girl?" The
grocer pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his bald forehead. But he
rallied a little.
"You fight these damage cases for the street railroads all through the
courts."
"Yes," Mr. Watling agreed, "but there a principle is involved. If the
railroads once got into the way of paying damages for every careless
employee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here you
have a child whose father is a poor janitor and can't afford sickness.
And your coachman, I imagine, will be more particular in the future."
In the end Mr. Weill made out a cheque and departed in a good humour,
convinced that he was well out of the matter. Here was one of many
instances I could cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt,
moreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who had
recommended the compromise. For I had been to the hospital and had seen
the child on the cot,--a dark little thing, lying still in her pain, with
the bewildered look of a wounded animal....
Not long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a more
or less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had
suddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a place
in Denver, and paid his expenses west.
The first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes and
Ripon were of importance to my future career, but there is little to
relate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in acquiring
that esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be had from my
seniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to a successful and
lucrative practice. My former comparison of the organization of our city
to a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible only
after long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be the
human anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and
industrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall
politicians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law,
politics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous system
too complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hard
and often late, I still found time for convivialities, for social
gaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losing
zest for the companionship of my former intimates. My mind was becoming
polarized by the contemplation of one object, success, and to it human
ties were unconsciously being sacrificed.
Tom Peters began to feel this, even at a time when I believed myself
still to be genuinely fond of him. Considering our respective
temperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the first
to fall in love and marry. One day he astonished me by announcing his
engagement to Susan Blackwood.
"That ends the liquor, Hughie," he told me, beamingly. "I promised her
I'd eliminate it."
He did eliminate it, save for mild relapses on festive occasions. A more
seemingly incongruous marriage could scarcely be imagined, and yet it was
a success from the start. From a slim, silent, self-willed girl Susan had
grown up into a tall, rather rawboned and energetic young woman. She was
what we called in those days "intellectual," and had gone in for
kindergartens, and after her marriage she turned out to be excessively
domestic; practising her theories, with entire success, upon a family
that showed a tendency to increase at an alarming rate. Tom, needless to
say, did not become intellectual. He settled down--prematurely, I
thought--into what is known as a family man, curiously content with the
income he derived from the commission business and with life in general;
and he developed a somewhat critical view of the tendencies of the
civilization by which he was surrounded. Susan held it also, but she said
less about it. In the comfortable but unpretentious house they rented on
Cedar Street we had many discussions, after the babies had been put to
bed and the door of the living-room closed, in order that our voices
might not reach the nursery. Perry Blackwood, now Tom's brother-in-law,
was often there. He, too, had lapsed into what I thought was an odd
conservatism. Old Josiah, his father, being dead, he occupied himself
mainly with looking after certain family interests, among which was the
Boyne Street car line. Among "business men" he was already getting the
reputation of being a little difficult to deal with. I was often the
subject of their banter, and presently I began to suspect that they
regarded my career and beliefs with some concern. This gave me no
uneasiness, though at limes I lost my temper. I realized their affection
for me; but privately I regarded them as lacking in ambition, in force,
in the fighting qualities necessary for achievement in this modern age.
Perhaps, unconsciously, I pitied them a little.
"How is Judah B. to-day, Hughie?" Tom would inquire. "I hear you've put
him up for the Boyne Club, now that Mr. Watling has got him out of that
libel suit."
"Carter Ives is dead," Perry would add, sarcastically, "let bygones be
bygones."
It was well known that Mr. Tallant, in the early days of his newspaper,
had blackmailed Mr. Ives out of some hundred thousand dollars. And that
this, more than any other act, stood in the way, with certain
recalcitrant gentlemen, of his highest ambition, membership in the Boyne.
"The trouble with you fellows is that you refuse to deal with conditions
as you find them," I retorted. "We didn't make them, and we can't change
them. Tallant's a factor in the business life of this city, and he has to
be counted with."
Tom would shake his head exasperatingly.
"Why don't you get after Ralph?" I demanded. "He doesn't antagonize
Tallant, either."
"Ralph's hopeless," said Tom. "He was born a pirate, you weren't, Hughie.
We think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?"