For one day and night, Aaron and the stubborn, loyal Swartwout smoke and exchange news. On the second day, Aaron opens offices in Nassau Street. Three lines appear in the Evening Post. The notice reads:
“Colonel Burr has returned to the city, and will resume his practice of the law. He has opened offices in Nassau Street.”
The town sits up and rubs its eyes. Aaron’s enemies—the old fashionable Hamilton-Schuyler coterie—are scandalized; his friends are exalted. What is most important, a cataract of clients swamps his offices, and when the sun goes down, he has received over two thousand dollars in retainers. Instantly, he is overwhelmed with business; never again will he cumber his journals with ha’penny registrations of groat and farthing economies. As redoubts are carried by storm, so, with a rush, to the astonishment of friend and foe alike, Aaron retakes his old place as foremost among the foremost at the New York bar.
CHAPTER XXIII—GRIEF COMES KNOCKING
BUSINESS rushes in upon Aaron; its volume overwhelms him.
“This is too much,” says he, “for a gentleman whose years have reached the middle fifties,” and he takes unto himself a partner.
Later he takes another partner; the work of the firm overflows into a quartette of rooms and keeps busy a dozen clerks.
“Why labor so hard?” asks the stubborn Swartwout. “Your income is the largest at the bar. You have no such need of money.”