miseration had been mingled with other feelings that sprang
out of the memory of the night I had called on him, when he had been
sick. Now I resented something in him which Tom Peters had called
"crust."

"The law!" I repeated. "Why?"

"Well," he said, "even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used to
think if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch of
human dignity."

Once more his smile disarmed me.

"And now" I asked curiously.

"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsible
for that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to this
country, he expected to find Utopia." The smile emerged again, like
the sun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism again
struggled within me. "And then came frightful troubles. For years he
could get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he never
lost his faith in America. 'It is man,' he would say, 'man has to grow
up to it--to liberty.' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth
nothing. And he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had
come here, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made that
mistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help
to make them better.

"That helped me," he continued, after a moment's pause. "For I've seen
a good many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper.
I've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against those
whom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great
deal more about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute
their profession to profit making,--profit making for themselves and
others. And they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high
standing, whom you would not think would do such things. They are on the
side of the powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich
men and corporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I
think, that can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the
courts. He is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men
won't see it."

It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance.
I could indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;
quotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me from
doing this,--something in his manner, which was neither argumentative
nor combative.

"That's why I am going