EDWARD FRANKLIN, LAWYER
Edward Franklin had taken up his law studies in the office of Judge
Bradley, the leading lawyer of the little village of Bloomsbury, where
Franklin was born, and where he had spent most of his life previous to
the time of his enlistment in the army. Judge Bradley was successful,
as such matters go in such communities, and it was his open boast that
he owed his success to himself and no one else. He had no faith in
such mythical factors as circumstances in the battle of life. This is
the common doctrine of all men who have arrived, and Judge Bradley had
long since arrived, in so far as the possibilities of his surroundings
would admit. His was the largest law library in the town. He had the
most imposing offices--a suite of three rooms, with eke a shiny
base-burner in the reception room. His was one of the three silk hats
in the town.
Thirty-five years earlier, a raw youth from old Vermont, Hollis N.
Bradley had walked into the embryonic settlement of Bloomsbury with a
single law book under his arm, and naught but down upon his chin. He
pleaded his first cause before a judge who rode circuit over a
territory now divided into three Congressional districts. He won his
first case, for his antagonist was even more ignorant than he. As
civilization advanced, he defended fewer men for stealing hogs, and
more for murder and adultery. His practice grew with the growth of the
population of the country about him. He was elected county attorney,
local counsel for the railroad, and judge of the circuit court. He was
mentioned for gubernatorial honours, and would perhaps have received
the party nomination but for the breaking out of the civil war. Not
fancying the personal risks of the army, he hired a substitute, and
this sealed his political fate; for Illinois at that time did not put
in power men who sent substitutes to the war. None the less, the lands
and moneys of the most prominent lawyer of the place kept him secure,
and human memories are short; so that, when Edward Franklin and others
of the young men of Bloomsbury returned from the war, they saw upon the
streets of the little town, as they had seen before they went away, the
tall form, the portly front, the smooth-shaven face, and the tall silk
hat of Judge Hollis N. Bradley, who had in every sense survived the war.
It was an immemorial custom in Bloomsbury for the youth who had
aspirations for a legal career to "read law" in Judge Bradley's office.
Two of his students had dropped their books to take up rifles, and they
came not back to their places. They were forgotten, save once a year,
upon Decoration Day, when Judge Bradley made eloquent tribute above
their graves. Upon such times Judge Bradley always shed tears, and
always alluded to the tears with pride. Indeed, his lachrymal ability
was something of which he had much right to be proud, it being well
known in the legal profession that one's fees are in direct proportion
to his ability to weep. Judge Bradley could always weep at the right
time before a Jury, and this facility won him many a case. Through no
idle whim had public sentiment, even after the incident of the
substitute, confirmed him in his position as the leading lawyer of
Bloomsbury.
It was therefore predetermined that Edward Franklin should go into the
office of Judge Bradley to begin his law studies, after he had decided
that the profession of the law was the one likely to offer him the best
career. In making his decision, Franklin was actuated precisely as are
many young men who question themselves regarding their career. He saw
the average results of the lives of others in a given calling, and
conceived, without consulting in most jealous scrutiny his own natural
fitnesses and preferences, that he might well succeed in that calling
because he saw others so succeeding. Already there were two dozen
lawyers in Bloomsbury, and it was to be questioned whether they all did
so well as had Judge Bradley in the hog-stealing epoch of the local
history. Yet it was necessary for him to take up something by way of
occupation, and it resolved itself somewhat into a matter of
cancellation. For the profession of medicine he had a horror, grounded
upon scenes of contract surgery upon the fields of battle. The
ministry he set aside. From commerce, as he had always seen it in his
native town, twelve hours a day of haggling and smirking, he shrank
with all the impulses of his soul. The abject country newspaper gave
him no inkling of that fourth estate which was later to spring up in
the land. Arms he loved, but there was now no field for arms. There
were no family resources to tide him over the season of experiment,
and, indeed, but for a brother and a sister, who lived in an adjoining
farming community, he had no relatives to be considered in his plans.
Perforce, then, Franklin went into the law, facing it somewhat as he
had the silent abattis, as with a duty to perform. Certainly, of all
students, Judge Bradley had never had a handsomer, a more mature, or a
more reluctant candidate than this same Edward Franklin, late captain
in the United States Army, now getting well on into his twenties,
grave, silent, and preoccupied, perhaps a trine dreamy. He might or
might not be good material for a lawyer; as to that, Judge Bradley did
not concern himself. Young men came into his office upon their own
responsibility.
It was one of the unvarying rules of Judge Bradley's office, and indeed
this was almost the only rule which he imposed, that the law student
within his gates, no matter what his age or earlier servitude, should
each morning sweep out the office, and should, when so requested, copy
out any law papers needing to be executed in duplicate. So long as a
student did these things, he was welcome as long as he cared to stay.
The judge never troubled himself about the studies of his pupil, never
asked him a question, indeed never even told him what books it might be
best to read, unless this advice were asked voluntarily by the student
himself. He simply gave the candidate a broom, a chair, and the
freedom of the library, which latter was the best law library in the
town. What more could one ask who contemplated a career at law? It
was for him to work out his own salvation; and to sweep the stairs each
morning.
Edward Franklin accepted his seat in Judge Bradley's office without any
reservations, and he paid his daily fee of tenure as had all the other
students before him, scorning not the broom. Indeed, his conscience in
small things augured well, for it was little cousin to his conscience
in great things. Ardent, ambitious, and resolute, he fell upon
Blackstone, Chitty, and Kent, as though he were asked to carry a
redoubt. He read six, eight, ten hours a day, until his head buzzed,
and he forgot what he had read. Then at it all over again, with teeth
set. Thus through more than a year he toiled, lashed forward by his
own determination, until at length he began to see some of the
beautiful first principles of the law--that law, once noble and
beneficent, now degraded and debased; once designed for the protection
of the individual, now used by society as the instrument for the
individual's extermination. So in his second year Franklin fared
somewhat beyond principles merely, and got into notes and bills, torts,
contracts, and remedies. He learned with a shiver how a promise might
legally be broken, how a gift should be regarded with suspicion, how a
sacred legacy might be set aside. He read these things again and
again, and forced them into his brain, so that they might never be
forgotten; yet this part of the law he loved not so much as its grand
first principles of truth and justice.
One morning, after Franklin had finished his task of sweeping down the
stairs, he sat him down by the window with Battersleigh's letter in his
hand; for this was now the third day since he had received this letter,
and it had been in his mind more vividly present than the pages of the
work on contracts with which he was then occupied. It was a bright,
fresh morning in the early spring. A little bird was singing somewhere
near the window. From where Franklin sat he could see the green grass
just starting, over in the courthouse yard. A long and lazy street lay
in perspective before the window, and along it, out beyond the confines
of the town, there reached the flat monotony of the dark prairie soil.
The leaves of the soft maples were beginning to show over there, near
the village church. A dog crossed the street, pausing midway of the
crossing to scratch his ear. The cart of the leading grocer was
hitched in front of his store, and an idle citizen or two paused near
by to exchange a morning greeting. All the little, uneventful day was
beginning, as it had begun so many times before here in this little,
uneventful town, where the world was finished, never more to change.
Franklin shuddered. Was this, then, to be his life? He turned to the
rows of scuffed-backed law books on their shelves. Then he turned
again to his letter, and to the window, and to the birds and the grass.
He caught himself noting how long the dog's hind leg looked, how
impossible the angle between the fore leg and the spine, as it half sat
in flea-compelled contortions.
There came a regular tread upon the stair, as there had always for
years come at this hour of half past seven in the morning, rain or
shine. Judge Bradley entered, tall, portly, smooth shaven, his silk
hat pushed back upon his brow, as was his fashion. Franklin turned to
make the usual morning salutation.
"Good-morning, Ned," said the Judge, affably.
"Good-morning, Judge," said Franklin. "I hope you are well."
"Yes, thank you. Nothing ever the matter with me. How are things
coming?"
"Oh, all right, thank you."
This was the stereotyped form of the daily greeting between the two.
Judge Bradley turned as usual to his desk, but, catching sight of the
letter still held in Franklin's hand, remarked carelessly:
"Got a letter from your girl?"
"Not so lucky," said Franklin. "From a friend."
Silence resulted. Judge Bradley opened his desk, took off his coat and
hung it on a nail, after his custom, thereafter seating himself at his
desk, with the official cough which signified that the campaign of the
day had begun. He turned over the papers for a moment, and remarked
absent-mindedly, and more to be polite than because the matter
interested him, "Friend, eh?"
"Yes," said Franklin, "friend, out West"; and both relapsed again into
silence. Franklin once more fell to gazing out of the window, but at
length turned toward the desk and pulled over his chair to a closer
speaking distance.
"Judge Bradley," said he, "I shouldn't wonder if I could pass my
examination for the bar."
"Well, now," said the Judge, "I hope you can. That's nice. Goin' to
hang out your own shingle, eh?"
"I might, if I got my license."
"Oh, that's easy," replied the other; "it's mostly a matter of form.
The court'll appoint a committee of three members of the bar, an'
they'll tell you when they want to see you for the circus--some evening
after court. They'll ask you where you've been readin' law, an' for
how long. If you tell 'em you've read in my office, it'll be all
right. I never knew 'em to fail to pass a student that had read with
me--it wouldn't be professional courtesy to me. You'll go through all
right, don't worry. You want to post up on a few such questions as,
'What is the law?' and 'What are the seven--or is it eight?--forms of
actions at law?' Then you want to be able to answer on 'What was the
rule in Shelley's Case?' There's sure to be some fool or other that'll
ask you that question, just to show off--I don't remember what the
d----d thing is myself--and you'll never hear of it again; but you get
fixed to answer them three questions, an' you can be admitted to the
bar all right anywhere in the State of Illinois, or leastways in this
county. Then it's customary for a fellow just admitted to the bar to
have a little jug around at his office before court adjourns--just to
comply with a professional custom, you know. No trouble about it--not
in the least. I'll see you through."
"I am clear in my own mind that I don't know much about the law," said
Franklin, "and I should not think of going up for examination if that
ended my studies in the profession. If I were intending to go into
practice here, sir, or near by, I should not think of applying for
admission for at least another year. But the fact is, I'm thinking of
going away."
"Goin' away?" Judge Bradley straightened up, and his expression if
anything was one of relief. He had had his own misgivings about this
grave-faced and mature young man should he go into the practice at the
Bloomsbury bar. It was well enough to encourage such possibilities to
take their test in some other locality. Judge Bradley therefore became
more cheerful. "Goin' away, eh?" he said. "Where to?"
"Out West," said Franklin, unconsciously repeating the phrase which was
then upon the lips of all the young men of the country.
"Out West, eh?" said the judge, with still greater cheerfulness.
"That's right, that's right. That's the place to go to, where you can
get a better chance. I came West in my day myself, though it isn't
West now; an' that's how I got my start. There's ten chances out there
to where there's one here, an' you'll get better pay for what you do.
I'd advise it, sir--I'd advise it; yes, indeed."
"I think it will be better," said Franklin calmly.
"Hate to lose you," said the judge, politely--"hate to lose you, of
course, but then a young man's got to make his way; he's got to get his
start."
Franklin sat silent for a few moments, musingly staring out of the
window, and listening, without active consciousness of the fact, to the
music of the singing bird which came from somewhere without. At length
he rose and turned toward the elder man.
"If you please, judge," said he, "get the committee appointed for
to-night if you can. I'll take the examination now."
"Yes? You are in a hurry!"
"Then to-morrow I'll go over and say good-bye to my sister; and the
next day I think I'll follow the wagons West. I've not much to put in
a wagon, so I can go by rail. The road's away west of the Missouri
now, and my letter comes from the very last station, at the head of the
track."
"So?" said the Judge. "Well, that ought to be far enough, sure, if you
go clean to the jumping-off place. Goin' to leave your sweetheart
behind you, eh?"
Franklin laughed. "Well, I don't need face that hardship," said he,
"for I haven't any sweetheart."
"Ought to have," said the judge. "You're old enough. I was just
twenty-two years old when I was married, an' I had just one hundred
dollars to my name. I sent back to Vermont for my sweetheart, an' she
came out, an' we were married right here. I couldn't afford to go back
after her, so she came out to me. An' I reckon," added he, with a
sense of deep satisfaction, "that she hasn't never regretted it."
"Well, I don't see how love and law can go together," said Franklin
sagely.
"They don't," said the judge tersely. "When you get so that you see a
girl's face a-settin' on the page of your law book in front of you, the
best thing you can do is to go marry the girl as quick as the Lord'll
let you. It beats the world, anyhow, how some fellows get mixed up,
and let a woman hinder 'em in their work. Now, in my case, I never had
any such a trouble."
"And I hope I never shall," said Franklin.
"Well, see that you don't. You hit it close when you said that love
an' law don't go together. Don't try to study 'em both at the same
time; that's my advice, an' I don't charge you anything for it, seeing
it's you." With a grin at his little jest, Judge Bradley turned back
to his desk and to his little world.