ck. Now I resented something in him
which Tom Peters had called "crust."

"The law!" I repeated. "Why?"

"Well," he said, "even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used to
think if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch of
human dignity."

Once more his smile disarmed me.

"And now" I asked curiously.

"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsible
for that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to this
country, he expected to find Utopia." The smile emerged again, like the
sun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism again
struggled within me. "And then came frightful troubles. For years he
could get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he never
lost his faith in America. 'It is man,' he would say, 'man has to grow up
to it--to liberty.' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth nothing.
And he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had come
here, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made that
mistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help to
make them better.

"That helped me," he continued, after a moment's pause. "For I've seen a
good many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper.
I've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against those
whom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great deal
more about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute their
profession to profit making,--profit making for themselves and others.
And they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high standing,
whom you would not think would do such things. They are on the side of
the powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich men and
corporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I think,
that can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the courts.
He is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men won't see
it."

It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance. I
could indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;
quotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me from
doing this,--something in his manner, which was neither argumentative nor
combative.

"That's why I am going into the law," he added. "And I intend to stay in
it if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us. Aren't
you at