he grows up. All the young men of the
neighborhood worship him and the girls love him.

"Here he comes," they say; "dear, dear old Jack--Jack, the darling
boy--the headstrong youth--Jack, the leader of our juvenile
sports--Jack, whose childish innocence wins all hearts. Three cheers for
dancing, bright-eyed Jack!"

On the other hand, ladies with the complexion of eighteen are, you learn
as the story progresses, quite elderly women, the mothers of middle-aged
heroes.

The experienced observer of stage-land never jumps to conclusions from
what he sees. He waits till he is told things.

The stage lawyer never has any office of his own. He transacts all his
business at his clients' houses. He will travel hundreds of miles to
tell them the most trivial piece of legal information.

It never occurs to him how much simpler it would be to write a letter.
The item for "traveling expenses" in his bill of costs must be something
enormous.

There are two moments in the course of his client's career that the
stage lawyer particularly enjoys. The first is when the client comes
unexpectedly into a fortune; the second when he unexpectedly loses it.

In the former case, upon learning the good news the stage lawyer at once
leaves his business and hurries off to the other end of the kingdom
to bear the glad tidings. He arrives at the humble domicile of the
beneficiary in question, sends up his card, and is ushered into the
front parlor. He enters mysteriously and sits left--client sits right.
An ordinary, common lawyer would come to the point at once, state the
matter in a plain, business-like way, and trust that he might have the
pleasure of representing, etc., etc.; but such simple methods are not
those of the stage lawyer. He looks at the client and says:

"You had a father."

The client starts. How on earth did this calm, thin, keen-eyed old man
in black know that he had a father? He shuffles and stammers, but the
quiet, impenetrable lawyer fixes his cold, glassy eye on him, and he is
helpless. Subterfuge, he feels, is useless, and amazed, bewildered
at the knowledge of his most private affairs possessed by his strange
visitant, he admits the fact: he had a father.

The lawyer smiles with a quiet smile of triumph and scratches his chin.

"You had a mother, too, if I am informed correctly," he continues.

It is idle attempting to escape this man's supernatural acuteness, and
the client owns up to having had a mother also.