ill you kindly tell me which way the stairs run?" She became a
little nervous and she says, "I will tell you the best I can; if you are
at the foot of the stairs they run up, and if you are to the top of the
stairs they run down." [Laughter.] So sometimes it is pretty important
to find out which way the lawyer is going when he enters in politics. He
should be tried and tested before being permitted to enter politics, in
my judgment, and while the State is taking upon itself the paternal
control of all our professions and business industries, it seems to me
they should have a civil service examination for the lawyer before he
enters the realm of politics.

A lawyer that I heard of, coming from a county down the river--a county
that has produced distinguished judges who have occupied positions on
the Court of Appeals and in the Supreme Court of the State--said of a
lawyer there who had been in politics, that he had started with bright
prospects, but had become indebted to the Bar during his period in
politics. He had gone back and had taken up the small cases, and yet in
his sober moments it was said the sparks of genius still exhibited
themselves at times. He was called upon to defend a poor woman at one
time who was arrested by a heartless corporation for stealing a lot of
their coal. He sobered up and squared himself before the jury, conducted
the examination of the case and the trial of it, and in a magnificent
burst of eloquence the case went to the jury. And after the jury
retired, he sat, while they deliberated, by his client. And finally the
jury came in. The foreman rose and said that "The jury find the
defendant not guilty." The distinguished lawyer, in the presence of the
crowd and jury, and justice of the peace, straightened back in his
chair. "My dear Miss Smith, you are again a free woman. No longer the
imputation of this heinous crime rests upon you. You may go from this
court-room as free as the bird that pinions its wings and flies toward
the heavens, to kiss the first ray of the morning sunshine. You may go
as free as that bird, but before you go pay me that $3.00 you owe me on
account." [Laughter.] What I mean to enforce by this is that the lawyer
who is in politics solely for the $3.00 is not a safe man to intrust
with political power.

Judge Baldwin, of Indiana, it is said, in giving his advice to lawyers
upon one occasion, told them that the course to be pursued by a lawyer
was first to get on, seco