t up
a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of
another room in the old Denver University building, where, in the
gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes" and defend imaginary cases.
(That, by the way, was the beginning of the Denver University Law
School.) I read my Blackstone, Kent, Parsons--working night and
day--and I began really to get some sort of "grasp of the law." Long
before I had passed my examinations and been called to the bar, Mr.
Thompson would give me demurrers to argue in court; and, having been
told that I had only a pretty poor sort of legal mind, I worked twice
as hard to make up for my deficiencies. I argued my first case, a
damage suit, when I was nineteen. And at last there happened one of
those lucky turns common in jury cases, and it set me on my feet.

A man had been held by the law on several counts of obtaining goods
under false pretences. He had been tried on the first count by an
assistant district attorney, and the jury had acquitted him. He had
been tried on the second count by another assistant, who was one of our
great criminal lawyers, and the jury had disagreed. There was a debate
as to whether it was worth while to try him for a third time, and I
proposed that I should take the case, since I had been working on it
and thought there was still a chance of convicting him. They let me
have my way, and though the evidence in the third charge was the same
as before--except as to the person defrauded--the jury, by good luck,
found against him. It was the turning point in my struggle. It gave
me confidence in myself; and it taught me never to give up.

And now I began to come upon "the Cat" again.

I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at
the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of
the great smelter companies of Colorado. The boy had suffered a
fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon--because of a hasty and
ill-considered diagnosis, I believed--had treated him for a bruised
hip. The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to
damages, called me a blackmailer--and that was enough. I forced the
case to trial.

I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young
fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]--though that was not his
name--and this was to be our first case. We were opposed by Charles J.
Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; an