"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man, chooses cowardice, mediocrity—and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes and his.'"
With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in darkness.
Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary illustration:
"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."
"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that touches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state. It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with an introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York, who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled to hospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself, that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state, and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part of hospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography, and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling, and, indeed, national undertaking?"
"Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide between us," said John Randel, Junior, relighting the candles with his tinder-box.
"No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public cause because of any state scruples," Judge Custis put in, in his grandest way. "That is not national; it is not Whig, Brother Clayton." The Judge here gave his entire family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Virginian and patrician in his treatment of the Delaware bourgeois and plebeian. "Granted that this corporation is young and untried: let it be disciplined in time, that it may avoid more expensive mistakes in the future. No cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause; the time may come when the talent of the American bar will be the parasite of corporations and monopolists, but it is too early for that degradation for you and me, Senator Clayton. The rights of a man involve all progress; progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As a son of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to me, I would not let this gentleman be sacrificed."
"If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case," the engineer said; "my poverty is my disqualification in his eyes."
He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the candles, but his breath failed him; his hands became limp, and then hastily covered his eyes, and he sank to the table with a groan, and put his head upon it convulsively.
"Gentlemen," he uttered, in a voice touching by its distress, "oh! gentlemen, professional life—my art—is, indeed, a tragedy."