d I was
puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of
prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to
dismiss it. The judge refused the motion, and for so doing--as he
afterward told me himself--he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose
presence in the court had puzzled me. After a three weeks' trial, in
which we worked night and day for the plaintiff--with X-ray photographs
and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the
medical school where I prepared them--the jury stood eleven to one in
our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again. The second
time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we
did not give up. It had been all fun for us--and for the town. The
word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting
the corporation heavyweights. It's more fun than a circus." And we
were confident that we could win; we knew that we were right.

One evening after dinner, when we were sitting in the dingy little back
room on Champa Street that served us as an office, A. M.
Stevenson--"Big Steve"--politician and attorney for the Denver City
Tramway Company, came shouldering in to see us--a heavy-jowled,
heavy-waisted, red-faced bulk of good-humour--looking as if he had just
walked out of a political cartoon. "Hello, boys," he said jovially.
"How's she going? Making a record for yourselves up in court, eh?
Making a record for yourselves. Well!"

He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smiled at us, with his
inevitable cigarette in his mouth--his ridiculously inadequate
cigarette. (When he puffed it, he looked like a fat boy blowing
bubbles.) "Wearing yourselves out, eh? Working night and day? Ain't
you getting about tired of it?"

"We got eleven to one each time," I said. "We'll win yet."

"Uh-huh. You will, eh?" He laughed amusedly. "One man stood out
against you each time, wasn't there?"

There was.

"Well," he said, "there always will be. You ain't going to get a
verdict in this case. You can't. Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't
I? Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case. Get
something for your work. Don't be a pair of fools. Settle it."

"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.

He winked a fat eye. "Jury'll hang. Every time. I'm here to tell you
so. Better settle it." [3]

We refused to. What was the use of courts if we could not get justice
f