Evening star. [volume], October 27, 1912, Page 3, Image 29

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
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THE GREAT
fRS, contrary to current report, are human
beings. The lives of lawyers
are human documents: more human,
I believe, than the lives of any other
men. And I say this in the very
beginning because I want you to
understand that I. in describing
what I have learned from the law,
am doing an intensely human thing.
I am trying to tell you that in my profession
there is a romance, a secrecy,
a flavor of mystery, that no outsider
can grasp. M<>re t han t his, no person
on earth knows in its entirety all
that a reputable lawyer hears, or
plans, or achieves. Not even one lawyer can know the
details of what another does.
If an attorney in good standing in your town told
one-half of what he learned from his clients, bowed men
and weeping women would walk your streets. If he
were not the greatest peacemaker in the community
life of today, disgrace would visit those who had never
before been introduced to shame. If he lived up to that
popular slander which credits him with fostering strife
in order to collect big fees, the courts could not despatch
the vast volume of business thus thrust upon them.
Moreover, the ?ood lawver?the successful lawver?
regards his profession with a reverence that leads him
to attempt always to keep people out of the courts
rather than in them. To the layman, this sounds, no
doubt, like a vaudeville joke. As a matter of fact, how
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ever, it is a solemn truth that members of the bar will
recognize as axiomatic. Let me illustrate: During the
last fifteen years I have enjoyed a tremendous practice,
and yet have not tried in court an average of four cases
a year throughout all that period.
It may be news to you when you read it; but this is
a fact: The Great Court of the country is in the offices
of the lawyers, behind their closed doors, in the privacy
of conferences, where hearts are laid bare and motives
are stripped clean of that veneer the neighbors know?
and where decisions not "to go to law" are reached.
I studied law by accident and against the advice of
my closest friend. My father had mapped out my
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goods store in my home town at a salary of forty or
fifty dollars a month. Such a prospect literally horrified
me. As the time drew near for me to go behind the
counter. I grew more and more gloomy and rebellious.
One afternoon I saw in the window of a little bookstore
a second-hand volume labeled "British Eloquence." I
went in and bought it for thirty-five cents, and that
night read everv line of it,?the speeches of Burke,
Erskine, Pitt, and the other great English orators. It
opened a new corridor before me, and I went to sleep
with the firm conviction that the law, the art of moving
men by speech, the work of helping men and mankind,
was my mission.
Strange to say, that same book exercised at about the
same time a similar influence on two of the greatest
lawyers in the United States. Frederick \V. Lehmann,
Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, says it
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tDrawing
by Frank Snapp
By a famous lawyer
was a great part of his inspiration to study law. And
Charles Nagel, Secretary* of Commerce and Labor, told
me only a year or two ago:
"With the single exception of the Bible, 'British Eloquence'
was the book that affected my life more than
any other volume I ever read. I prize now as my dearest
possession the very* copy I had when I was a boy."
The decision I had formed that night held good the
following morning, and immediately I went to see my
friend. When he had heard my enthusiastic talk, he
said:
"It sounds tine, very fine; but it won't do. You're t<x>
much of a dreamer. You would never in this world be
able to devote to the business that practical work which
is necessary."
"I can do it, and I will do it!" I replied. "What's
more, no man who is not a dreamer can be a good lawyer.
Ideals an 1 the law go together."
That remark was made twenty-nine years ago, and
I still subscribe to it. My profession has taught me its
profound truth.
\i\' friend's conclusion was that, if I felt so strongly
about it, I had better give it a try. I did, and,
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hundred dollars in debt. Right there began the long
and hard pull. A young man in almost any other profession
gets at the very outset some driblets of work,
some association in a business way with other men.
Even the physician just out of college is called occasionally
when other doctors cannot be found or when