By Advice of Counsel

by Arthur Cheney Train

"And what was the father like?" she continued with a woman's curiosity.

"He wasn't so much of a much, either, evidently," answered Mr. Tutt.

We have previously had occasion to comment upon the fact that no client, male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do. Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do, attempt to secure counsel's approval of the contemplated sin; but while a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience, rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser. Most men being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them out. If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not wish to run the chance of having their lawyer shame them out of it. That is their own business. And it should be! The law presents sufficiently perplexing problems for the lawyer without his seeking trouble in the dubious complexities of his client's morals! Anyhow, that is the regulation way a lawyer looks at it and that is the way to hold one's clients. Do what you are instructed to do—so long as it isn't too raw! Question the propriety of his course and while your client may follow your advice in this single instance he probably will not return again.

The paradoxical aspect of the matter with Mr. Tutt was that while he was known as a criminal lawyer whenever he was asked for advice he concerned himself quite as much with his client's moral as his legal duty. The rather subtle reason for this was probably to be found in the fact that since he found the law so easy to circumvent he preferred to disregard it entirely as a sanction of conduct and merely to ask himself "Now is this what a sportsman and a gentleman would do?" The fact that a man was a technical criminal meant nothing to him at all; what interested him was whether the man was or was not a "mean" man. If he was, to hell with him! In a word, he applied to any given situation the law as it ought to be and not the law as it was. A very easy and flexible test! say you, sarcastically. Do you really think so? There may be forty different laws upon the same subject in as many different states of our political union, but how many differing points of view upon any single moral question would you find among as many citizens? The moral code of decent people is practically the same all over the terrestrial ball, and fundamentally it has not changed since the days of Hammurabi. The ideas of gentlemen and sportsmen as to what "is done" and "isn't done" haven't changed since Fabius Tullius caught snipe in the Pontine marshes.

Mr. Tutt was a crank on this general subject and he carried his enthusiasm so far that he was always tilting like Don Quixote at some imaginary windmill, dragging a very unwilling Sancho Panza after him in the form of his reluctant partner. Moreover, he had a very keen sympathy for all kinds of outcasts, deeming most of them victims of the sins of their own or somebody's else fathers. So when he learned from Miss Wiggin that Tutt had presumed to interfere with the financial prospects of the unknown Miss Sadie Burch he was distinctly aggrieved, less on her account to be sure than upon that of his client's whom he regarded more or less in his keeping. And, as luck would have it, the object of his grievance, having forgotten something, at that moment unexpectedly reentered the office to retrieve it.

"Hello, Mr. Tutt!" he exclaimed. "Not gone yet!"

His senior partner glanced at him sharply, while Miss Wiggin hastily sidestepped into the corridor.

"Look here, Tutt!" said Mr. Tutt. "I don't know just what you've been telling young Clifford, or how you've been interfering in his private affairs, but if you've been persuading him to disregard any wish of his father plainly expressed in his own handwriting and incorporated with his will you've gone further than you've any right to go."

"But," expostulated Tutt, "you know how dangerous it is to meddle with things like that. Our experience certainly shows that it's far wiser to let the law settle all doubtful questions than to try to guess what the final testamentary intention of a dead testator really was. Don't you remember the Dodworth case? A hypersensitive conscience cost our widowed client ten thousand dollars! I say, leave well enough alone."

"'Well enough'! 'Well enough'!" snarled Mr. Tutt. "Are you going to constitute yourself the judge of what is well enough for a young man's soul? I give you fair warning, Tutt: he's heard your side of it, but before he gets through he's going to hear mine as well!"