“To calm their passions with the words of Age,
Slow from his seat arose the Pylian sage,
Experienced Nestor, in Persuasion skilled,
Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled”—
When Nestor and Mr. Walpole closed, there was no quorum. The member from New Jersey, who had engaged him in debate, was sleeping the sleep of honorable intoxication in his seat. Outside, all Washington was laughing and cursing. Majah Pike had not appeared.
It was the end of the golden-mouthed orator. His voice was never heard again in the House. His one speech was noticed only to be laughed at, and the news went home to his constituents. They showed that magnanimity which the poets tell us is an attribute of the bucolic character. They, so to speak, turned over the pieces of their broken idol with their cow-hide boots, and remarked that they had known it was clay, all along, and dern poor clay at that.
So the golden-mouthed went home, to try to make a ruined practice repair his ruined fortune; to give mortgages on his home to pay the debts his hospitality had incurred; to discuss with a few feeble old friends ways and means by which the war might have been averted; to beget a son of his old age, and to see the boy grow up in a new generation, with new ideas, new hopes, new ambitions, and a lifetime before him to make memories in.
They had little enough in common, but they came to be great friends as the boy grew older, for Horace, inherited all his traits from the old man, except a certain stern energy which came from his silent, strong-hearted mother, and which his father saw with a sad joy.
Mr. Walpole sent his son to New York to study law in the office of Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather, who were a pushing young firm in 1850. Horace found it a very quiet and conservative old concern. Snowden and Gilfeather were dead; Weeden had been on the bench and had gone off the bench at the call of a “lucrative practice;” there were two new partners, whose names appeared only on the glass of the office door and in a corner of the letter-heads.
Horace read his law to some purpose. He became the managing clerk of Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather. This particular managing clerkship was one of unusual dignity and prospective profit. It meant, as it always does, great responsibility, little honor, and less pay. But the firm was so peculiarly constituted that the place was a fine stepping-stone for a bright and ambitious boy. One of the new partners was a business man, who had put his money into the concern in 1860, and who knew and cared nothing about law. He kept the books and managed the money, and was beyond that only a name on the door and a terror to the office-boys. The other new partner was a young man who made a specialty of collecting debts. He could wring gold out of the stoniest and barrenest debtor; and there his usefulness ended. The general practice of the firm rested on the shoulders of Judge Weeden, who was old, lazy, and luxury-loving, and who, to tell the honest truth, shirked his duties. Such a state of affairs would have wrecked a younger house; but Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather had a great name, and the consequences of his negligent feebleness had not yet descended upon Judge Weeden’s head.