my papers, and covered my green baize table with
an infinitesimal section of H---- County real estate. Even the slumberer
on the sofa was not exempt. His usually ruddy face had become ashen, and
his snoring was developing into a series of choking gasps. It was
fearful, this dust,--alkaline, penetrating, stifling,--and from such
soil the raw-boned, hard-featured men of H---- wrung a living. And I,
sharing their narrow lives, began to understand the true significance of
the word 'onery' as applied to us by our more prosperous and ofttimes
just exasperated neighbors.

"It was court day, and I had just come in after a stiff tussle with a
pig-headed judge, an irritating opposing counsel, and a H---- County
jury. I thought of old Uncle Peter Whitehead, 'The onriest critters in
the whole State of Illinoy come out o' H----! Thar ain't no tellin'
which way an H---- County jury's a goin' to jump. The law and the facts
ain't nothin' ter them, it's jest the way they are feelin' that
particler day and minnit. If so happen they got outer bed the wrong foot
furrard that mornin', then it's good-by ter the pris'ner, and hell fer
the lawyer that's defendin' him!'

"Court had adjourned until two o'clock, leaving the fate of my client
undecided, and I came into my office, tired-out, warm, and exceedingly
anxious. Clearing Thad Hawley meant a great deal to me just then. It was
my first important case, and I felt that my future would be decided in a
great measure by its outcome. If the twelve stolid farmers upon whom I
had showered my eloquence went Fraley-ward in their verdict, I knew that
my professional goose would be cooked, and visions of a move to some
distant bailiwick rose up before me. Fraley and Hicks would then
monopolize the Harrisville practice, and perhaps in a year or so some
other fledgling would rise up in his ignorance and be as ruthlessly cut
down as I had been.

"Yes, I was worried, and the sight of Andrew Sale asleep on my sofa did
not tend to soothe that feeling. At any time a visit from the county
chairman would have been most unwelcome, but now it was an exhibition of
unmitigated gall! Another contribution, I supposed, angrily eyeing the
sleeper. I had been the 'good thing' for Sale and his crowd for some
years past, and had pretty well resolved to cut loose from them--and
politics. I thought of the many ambitious young fellows I knew who had
been permanently injured while hovering around the political flame.
Some,