croup, or even experiment with his own much-abused liver, when he would
not intrust a young attorney with the suing a note where ten witnesses saw
the note signed and the "consideration money" paid over. And if the public
really knew how much danger their pockets were in when the "buttons" were
under the control of inexperienced lawyers, the number of "starvers" would
be doubled. What "eminent" lawyer is there who does not look back to the
"practice" of his youth, in perfect terror to witness the mistakes he
made, as the helmsman, who has scudded through the breakers to the open
sea, glances back at the dangers he escaped?

The young lawyers of a year back are, however, five years--perhaps ten--in
advance of the lawyers of this year's growth. The latter have greater
rivalry in the _hordes_ of practitioners from the interior whom the "new
code" have driven from their _trespass quare clausum fregit_ into the
city. Many of them, too, were men of mark in their ports of departure,
bold and confident in their new haven!

One field, however, in the legal township of this city, offers room upon
its face for tillers--_the field of advocacy_! It is ploughed by some
twenty or thirty, and _harrowed_ by some fifty or sixty. There are a
_dozen_ whom the ghosts of Nisi Prius flock to hear upon great occasions.
And these will long hold the monopoly.

Why?

Because the advocate and barrister must have had vast experience at Nisi
Prius (or the court where matters of fact are investigated by judge and
jury); have acquired a practised tact; have had opportunities of testing
their own calibre to know if they are fitted for emergencies--as the
gunsmith tests his barrels before he "stocks" them. And the young lawyer
has small opportunity afforded him to acquire this tact--to permit this
testing. If he can play "devil" for a few years to some barrister of
extended practice, or scent "occasions" like a blood-hound on the trail of
the valuable fugitive from justice, then he is a happy man, and is in the
fair way of soon becoming a monopolist himself.

Any juryman of two years' standing will corroborate our statement as to
the openness of the field of legal advocacy. How often has he seen cause
after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are
engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or
five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like
the queen of an active chess-board; p