Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/69

43 PRACTICE OF LAW IN NEW YORK CITY. 43 sworn to by her some years before. On re-direct examination, she detailed at length how that written testimony had been of- fered to her for two hundred and fifty dollars before the trial, and named this reputable attorney then in the room by accident simply as the man who offered it. She in fact did not know the reputable attorney; he had never seen her before, and the story was a fabri- cation. On sending up a card to the bench, the judge promptly let this attorney testify. Again, different law firms may safely combine here in a pro- tracted elaborate scheme of fraud. A retail merchant, for instance, suddenly and without obvious cause fails, either by a general assignment with preferences, or (the latest improved method) by simply delivering all his assets in parcels, under bills of sale, to various kith and kin in payment of alleged indebtedness to each. The wholesalers, who have just vied with one another to furnish the subject matter for this failure, seek redress by law, but they find the way has been from the outset blocked by at- tachments, replevins, confessed judgments, and receiverships, each proceeding being prima facie sound, and represented by some lawyer in apparently hot pursuit of the insolvent, but really in combination with this insolvent's legal representative. The se- curity of the insolvent is thus so complete, that one of them so intrenched, lately under oath at the Court House, said, " Since my failure I have enjoyed perfect peace." Of all this fraud the wholesalers are certain, but the threadbare presumption of the insolvent's purity leaves them without legal resource, save to embalm this misplaced credit on our judgment docket, already in large part a monstrous exhibit of similar doings, which it seems are impossible under the laws of nations of Western Europe. These are a few of the instances of the chicanery that may thrive here, and which no one would dare enter upon in provincial or sparsely settled communities, where everybody and his allies are known or can be quickly found out. These instances mean that litigation here, more perhaps as to facts than as to law, is extra-hazardous, making results doubtful or mysterious to the timid. All that has gone before indicates that trials here call for peculiar firmness in the lawyer, — a firm- ness that comes, even to the man naturally endowed for court work, only by constant practice. As the horse that grades the track may not be the one to win the race, so an office lawyer of respectable learning and ability may be no match in a trial