ve got to overlook the
fact that a fellow occasionally lifts his voice and brays. Man does not
live by the spirit alone; he needs bread, and bread's getting hard to
get."

"I've noticed it," replied Leighton, who had covered all this ground
before in talks with Balcomb and did not care to go into it further.

"And then, you remember," Balcomb went on, in enjoyment of his own
reminiscences, "I wooed the law for a while. But I guess what I learned
wouldn't have embarrassed Chancellor Kent. I really had a client once. I
didn't see a chance of getting one any other way, so I hired him. He was
a coon. I employed him for two dollars to go to the Grand Opera House
and buy a seat in the orchestra when Sir Henry Irving was giving _The
Merchant of Venice_. He went to sleep and snored and they threw him out
with rude, insolent, and angry hands after the second act; and I brought
suit against the management for damages, basing my claim on the idea
that they had spurned my dusky brother on account of his race, color and
previous condition of servitude. The last clause was a joke. He had
never done any work in his life, except for the state. He was a very
sightly coon, too, now that I recall him. The show was, as I said, _The
Merchant of Venice_, and I'll leave it to anybody if my client wasn't at
least as pleasing to the eye as Sir Henry in his Shylock togs. I suppose
if it had been _Othello_, race feeling would have run so high that Sir
Henry would hardly have escaped lynching. Well, to return. My client got
loaded on gin about the time the case came up on demurrer and gave the
snap away, and I dropped out of the practice to avoid being disbarred.
And it was just as well. My landlord had protested against my using the
office at night for poker purposes, so I passed up the law and sought
the asphodel fields of promotion. _Les affaires font l'homme_, as old
Professor Garneau used to say at college. So here I am; and I'm glad I
shook the law. I'd got tired of eating coffee and rolls at the Berlin
bakery three times a day.

"Why, Morris, old man," he went on volubly, "there were days when the
loneliness in my office grew positively oppressive. You may remember
that room I had in the old Adams and Harper Block? It gave upon a
courtyard where the rats from a livery stable came to disport themselves
on rainy days. I grew to be a dead shot with the flobert rifle; but
lawsy, there's mighty little consideration for true merit in this world