and shinning, and sucking all round.
It's give and take. I am not here to look out for other men, I'm here to
take care of myself--for nobody else will. It's very sad, I know; it's
very sad, indeed. It's absolutely melancholy. Ah, yes! where was I? Oh!
I was saying that a lie well stuck to is better than the truth wavering.
It's perfectly dreadful, my son, from some points of view--Christianity,
for instance. But what on earth are you going to do? The only happy
people are the rich people, for they don't have this eternal bother how
to make money. Don't misunderstand me, my son; I do not say that you must
always tell stories. Heaven forbid! But a man is not bound always to tell
the whole truth. The very law itself says that no man need give evidence
against himself. Besides, business is no worse than every other calling.
Do you suppose a lawyer never defends a man whom he knows to be guilty?
He says he does it to give the culprit a fair trial. Fiddle-de-dee! He
strains every nerve to get the man off. A lawyer is hired to take the
side of a company or a corporation in every quarrel. He's paid by the
year or by the case. He probably stops to consider whether his company
is right, doesn't he? he works for justice, not for victory? Oh, yes!
stuff! He works for fees. What's the meaning of a retainer? That if, upon
examination, the lawyer finds the retaining party to be in the right, he
will undertake the case? Fiddle! no! but that he will undertake the case
any how and fight it through. So 'tis all round. I wish I was rich, and
I'd be out of it."

Mr. Boniface Newt discoursed warmly; Mr. Abel Newt listened with extreme
coolness. He whiffed his cigar, and leaned his head on one side as he
hearkened to the wisdom of experience; observing that his father put his
practice into words and called it philosophy.

CHAPTER XVII.

OF GIRLS AND FLOWERS.

Mr. Abel Newt was not a philosopher; he was a man of action.

He told his mother that he could not accompany her to the Springs,
because he must prepare himself to enter the counting-room of his father.
But the evening before she left, Mrs. Newt gave a little party for Mrs.
Plumer, of New Orleans. So Miss Grace, of whom his mother had written
Abel, and who was just about leaving school, left school and entered
society, simultaneously, by taking leave of Madame de Feuille and making
her courtesy at Mrs. Boniface Newt's.

Madame de Feuille's was a "finishing" school. An extr