Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/915

Rh always regarded as one of the most remarkable in the authentic annals of judicature. By some chance the office was vacant one day, except for myself and the office-boy, when Mr. Gauge came in from a reference which had occupied his attention all the morning, and sent the boy to the restaurant to bring in his lunch. I was sitting in the little room which served as an antechamber to the offices, trimming my nails and dreaming of the time when I should be a partner in some great firm paying more thousands a year for their office-rent than a third-year clerk gets hundreds for his services. I was only in my first year then; and, although I was a regularly-licensed attorney and counsellor-at-law and entitled to write LL.B. after my name by virtue of my degree from the Law School, it would be yet a year and a half before I could expect to see the color of the firm's money, and my third year's salary would hardly be sufficient to pay for my modest lodgings and the exceedingly plain fare of the boarding-house I then patronized. I was hungry, and waited impatiently for the return of the boy, that I might go out for my own lunch, thinking in turn how I could get the most enjoyment out of the fifteen cents I allowed myself for the mid-day meal, and what a luxury it would be to come rushing into such palatial quarters, with a thousand or perhaps a five-thousand dollar fee in hand for my morning's work, and send over to Delmonico's for a lunch with liquid accompaniments whose cost alone would have supplied my wants for a week. I lived modestly then, you see,—partly from necessity and partly because I thought it better to economize at the outset of my career than afterwards when others might be dependent upon my efforts; for even then I was looking forward to those domestic pleasures which have since been the solace of my life, as well as to the professional honors which I still hope to achieve.

It was only by the utmost persistency that I obtained a place in the office of Gauge & Swallow at all. In fact, Mr. Swallow said, with one of his noted chuckles, that he guessed they would have to take me in, in order to keep me out. Neat compliment, that. I have always been noted for my persistency; and that is not the only time it has been rewarded. Persistency, neatness, and diligence are great virtues. To the first I owe the fact that I got a place in our offices; to the second, that I was engaged in Professor Cadmus's great case; and to the third, that I am now chief clerk and not without hope of being a partner. I hardly know to which I should attribute the rest of my good fortune.

As I said, I was paring my nails in the outer room. I was always careful of my hands, and it requires a good deal of attention them in proper condition in the dust and grime of the city while doing the miscellaneous work that devolves on a junior clerk in a great law-office. I never forgot myself, however, and fancy that, though I was the youngest, there was not a more presentable man in the whole force. I suppose it was on account of my universally neat appearance that I was for a long time employed almost entirely to represent the firm in communicating with other lawyers, especially where verbal messages had to be transmitted. Of course I would rather have done other work,—work somewhat better suited to the preparation I had made and the rank I had acquired in the university. However, I made no complaint,