ght. Let it go. I can stand
it; but don't anybody ever undertake to tell me that the law protects
human beings in their rights. Good-morning."

"Wait a moment, Mr. Tompkins; you've forgotten my fee."

"F-f-f-fee! Why, you don't charge anything when I don't sue, do you?"

"Certainly, for my advice. My fee is ten dollars."

"Ten dollars! Ten dollars! Why, colonel, that's just what I paid for
my half of that dog. I haven't got fifty cents to my name. But I'll
tell you what I'll do: I'll make over all my rights in that setter pup
to you, and you kin go round and fight it out with Potts. If that dog
bites me again, I'll sue you and Potts as sure as my name's Tompkins."

The other case was of a somewhat more serious character. Upon a
subsequent occasion a man hobbled into the office upon crutches.
Proceeding to a chair and making a cushion of some newspapers, he sat
down very gingerly, placed a bandaged leg upon another chair, and
said,

"Col. Coffin, my name is. Briggs. I want to get your opinion about a
little point of law. Now, colonel, s'posin' you lived up the 'pike
here a half a mile, next door to a man named Johnson. And s'posin' you
and Johnson was to get into an argument about the human intellect,
and you was to say to Johnson that a splendid illustration of the
superiority of the human intellect was to be found in the power of
the human eye to restrain the ferocity of a wild animal. And s'posin'
Johnson was to remark that that was all bosh, because nobody _could_
hold a wild animal with the human eye, and you should declare that you
could hold the savagest beast that was ever born if you could once fix
your gaze on him.

"Well, then, s'posin' Johnson was to say he'd bet a hundred dollars he
could bring a tame animal that you couldn't hold with your eye, and
you was to take him up on it, and Johnson was to ask you to come down
to his place to settle the bet. You'd go, we'll say, and Johnson'd
wander round to the back of the house and pretty soon come front
again with a dog bigger'n any four decent dogs ought to be. And then
s'posin' Johnson'd let go of that dog and set him on you, and he'd
come at you like a sixteen-inch shell out of a howitzer, and you'd
get scary about it and try to hold the dog with your eye, and
couldn't. And s'posin' you'd suddenly conclude that maybe your kind
of an eye wasn't calculated to hold that kind of a dog, and you'd
conclude to run for a plum tree in order to have a chance to c