Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/15

Rh also by the effect which the court gives of the law of such facts; and here, too, the record he makes is as fleeting as the facts and the wandering vagaries of the jury before whom he discusses them—a record remembered for an hour and then forgotten forever. Thus the small audience, the interests of opposing counsel, and the fact that the court who decides against one never thinks much of the effort of the one it holds against, and the further fact that, in the nature of the case, no record of such effort is possible, places the lawyer at a disadvantage under which no other profession or calling rests, so far as his record is concerned.

In the printed arguments which are addressed to the appellate courts, the case is but little better, since they are buried in the files of the court, read only by the counsel on the other side, and the court, and by it often not understandingly, and without sufficient attention to the facts to follow the argument, much less to give it the credit and weight which it deserves. So, while the judgment of the court on what the law is, is recorded, the argument of the lawyer as to what it should be, is recalled only to be forgotten.

Without disparagement to either of the other professions, or to the ability, or pretenses to ability, or to the character of those who are more strictly deemed public men, it must be admitted that the evidence of character and ability afforded by a reputation as a lawyer in the front rank of his profession, is, beyond all question, superior to that which is offered by the holding of any mere public position or office ever has, or in and of itself ever can afford. Nor is there in any other calling or profession so sure or accurate a measure afforded, by which any one may be tried and tested, as in this. The quack in medicine may meet with wondrous success; the minister of the Rev. Charles Honeyman's type exists not alone in fiction; the statesman, or rather the supposed statesman, since he is where a statesman ought to be, may be destitute alike of character and ability, or, if possessed of either, only in a very limited degree—the creature of circumstances or of accidents, a partisan, the creature of