"Well, how do you think Clayton is going to succeed," said Jones, "if the law is so clearly against him?"
"Oh, bless you, you don't know Clayton. He is a glorious mystifier. In the first place, he mystifies himself. And, now, you mark me. When a powerful fellow mystifies himself, so that he really gets himself thoroughly on to his own side, there's nobody he can't mystify. I speak it in sober sadness, Jones, that the want of this faculty is a great hindrance to me in a certain class of cases. You see I can put on the pathetic and heroic, after a sort; but I don't take myself along with me—I don't really believe myself. There's the trouble. It's this power of self-mystification that makes what you call earnest men. If men saw the real bread and butter and green cheese of life, as I see it,—the hard, dry, primitive facts,—they couldn't raise such commotions as they do."
"Russel, it always makes me uncomfortable to hear you talk. It seems as if you didn't believe in anything!"
"Oh, yes, I do," said Russel; "I believe in the multiplication table, and several other things of that nature at the beginning of the arithmetic; and, also, that the wicked will do wickedly. But, as to Clayton's splendid abstractions, I only wish him joy of them. But, then, I shall believe him while I hear him talk; so will you; so will all the rest of us. That's the fun of it. But the thing will be just where it was before, and I shall find it so when I wake up to-morrow morning. It's a pity such fellows as Clayton couldn't be used as we use big guns. He is death on anything he fires at; and if he only would let me load and point him, he and I together would make a firm that would sweep the land. But here he comes, upon my word."
"Hallo, Clayton, all ready?"
"Yes," said Clayton, "I believe so. When will the case be called?"
"To-day, I'm pretty sure," said Russel.
Clayton was destined to have something of an audience in his first plea; for, the Gordons being an influential and a largely-connected family, there was quite an interest excited among them in the affair. Clayton also had many warm personal friends, and his father, mother, and sister were to be present; for, though residing in a different part of the state, they were at this time on a visit in the vicinity of the town of E.
There is something in the first essay of a young man, in any profession, like the first launching of a ship, which has a never-ceasing hold on human sympathies. Clayton's father, mother, and sister, with Nina, at the time of the dialogue we have given, were sitting together in the parlor of a friend's house in E., discussing the same event.
"I am sure that he will get the case," said Anne Clayton, with the confidence of a generous woman and warm-hearted sister. "He has been showing me the course of his argument, and it is perfectly irresistible. Has he said anything to you about it, father?"