han any man of your years in my acquaintance
at the bar. This scheme of yours, now, it's a veritable gold mine.
Not but that anybody could make use of it. It can't be patented,
you know. But it's excellently devised; no one will deny that.
What do you say to a partnership, eh? On the same terms?"

Now, I had more than once thought of the same thing myself, but
the idea of associating myself in business with an out-and-out
criminal attorney had to my mind serious drawbacks. We discussed
the matter at length, however, and Gottlieb pointed out very wisely
that I was running a great risk in distributing broadcast cards
upon which appeared the unauthorized name of Haight & Foster, as
well as in conducting an office under my own name, when in fact I
was but an attorney's clerk downtown. My connection and association
with such a reputable firm was an asset not to be jeopardized
lightly, and he advised my withdrawing so far as I could all my
cards from circulation and conducting my business _sub rosa_. In
the end we came to an understanding which we reduced to writing.
I was to become a silent partner in Gottlieb's business and my
office was to become a branch of his, my own name being entirely
in abeyance. On the whole, this arrangement pleased me very well,
as under it I ran practically no risk of having my activities
discovered by my employers.

It is somewhat difficult to know just in what order to present
these memoirs to the reader, for from this time on my life became
a very varied one. Had I the time I should like nothing better
than to paint for my own satisfaction an old-fashioned law office
as it was conducted in the 'seventies--its insistent note of
established respectability, the suppressed voices of its young men,
their obvious politeness to each other and defence to clients,
their horror at anything vulgar, the quiet, the irritating quiet,
Mr. Wigger's red wig--he was the engrossing clerk--the lifelessness
of the atmosphere of the place, as if nothing real ever happened
there, and as if the cases we prepared and tried were of interest
only on account of the legal points involved. When I was there,
filing papers in their dusty packages, I used to feel as though I
was fumbling among the dust of clients long since dead and gone.
The place stifled and depressed me. I longed for red blood and
real life. There I was, acting as a clerk on nothing a year, when
uptown I was in the centre of the whirlpool of