thing is done every day of practice in the City of New York.
Lawyers who are Officers of the Court prostitute the Court with
cheerful zeal--men with a high sense of self-respect in their private
lives, demean themselves beyond expression in their professional
careers--gentlemen who would not stoop to the slightest equivocation
up-town, perjure themselves for money down-town, or teach their clerks
to do it for them. It is not a pretty practice, but Gordon ought to have
known the custom. However, being young at that time, it still shocked
him. To-day he says it only fills him with disgust. But he was just as
much of a crank then as he is now, so he took Willard's affidavit before
the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association.

He might have seen the smile on the faces of his auditors as he told his
story, had he not been blinded by zeal. However the Chairman was grave
and judicial enough when he announced it was not the province of the
Committee to take up the quarrels of counsel, and that they did not
propose to investigate light accusations of perjury.

Indeed, the Chairman was so very judicial, and his speech so well
delivered, that he might have been suspected of having said something of
the same sort before under similar circumstances. But Gordon, crank
that he was, thought of nothing but his point, and stoutly maintained
that false swearing was being practised every day by lawyers, great and
small--that tricks and treachery were personal matters reflecting on but
not involving the profession as a whole, while licensed perjury was a
travesty of law, striking at the very foundations of Justice. So he went
on, boiling over with intensity and utterly innocent of tact.

But when the Chairman stopped him and said something about "seeking aid
in legislative action," or "going before a Grand Jury," Gordon, young as
he was, looked straight into the speaker's eyes and drank in experience,
if not wisdom, from their glance.

Later on Willard's client quarrelled with his counsel, and put into
Gordon's hands the very proofs he needed. But the Grievance Committee
never saw them, for Gordon locked the papers in his safe and spoke no
word.

But that did not close the episode.

It was, however, the beginning of the end as far as Gordon and Willard
were concerned.

More than a year passed before the two men met again. Willard had in the
meantime been appointed an Assistant District Attorney, and practised
only in the Criminal