the law would indeed be a noble profession,
and the natural misunderstandings, ignorance, and different points of
view would make business enough.

"Stuff!" said Mr. Sharp. "If you begin by declining causes you
disapprove of, the public will end by letting you alone in your
self-conceited squeamishness. It's human nature you've got to deal with,
not theories about law and justice. I tell you that men like litigation.
They want to have it out with somebody. And it is better than
fisticuffs."

From Mr. Hunt, who moved in the serener upper currents of the law, Philip
got more satisfaction.

"Of course, Mr. Burnett, there are miserable squabbles in the law
practice, and contemptible pettifoggers and knaves, and men who will sell
themselves for any dirty work, as there are in most professions and
occupations, but the profession could not exist for a day if it was not
on the whole on the side of law and order and justice.

"No doubt it needs from time to time criticism and reformation.
So does the church. You look at the characters of the really great
lawyers! And there is another thing. In dealing with the cases of our
complex life, there is no accomplishment, no learning in science, art, or
literature, that the successful practitioner will not find it very
advantageous to possess. And a lawyer will never be eminent who has not
imagination."

Philip thought he had a very good chance of exercising his imagination in
the sky chamber where he slept--a capital situation from which to observe
the world. There could not have been an uglier view created--a shapeless
mass of brick and stone and painted wood, a collected, towering
monstrosity of rectangular and inharmonious lines, a realized dream of
hideousness--but for the splendid sky, always changing and doing all that
was possible in the gleams and shadows and the glowing colors of morning
and evening to soften the ambitious work of man; but for the wide
horizon, with patches of green shores and verdant flats washed by the
kindly tide; but for the Highlands and Staten Island, the gateway to the
ocean; but for the great river and the mighty bay shimmering and
twinkling and often iridescent, and the animated life of sails and
steamers, the leviathans of commerce and the playthings of pleasure, and
the beetle-like, monstrous ferry-boats that pushed their noses through
all the confusion, like intelligent, business-like saurians that knew how
to keep an appointed line by a clu