“Oh, bosh!” said the Doctor. “You are talking of ideals.”
“Certainly I am,” returned the Idiot. “Why shouldn’t I? What’s the use of wasting one’s breath on anything else?”
“Well, it’s all rot!” put in Mr. Brief. “There never was any such union as that, and there never will be.”
“You are the last person in the world to say a thing like that, Mr. Brief,” said the Idiot—”you, who belong to the nearest approach to the ideal union that the world has ever known!”
“What! Me?” demanded the Lawyer. “Me? I belong to a union?”
“Of course you do—or at least you told me you did,” said the Idiot.
“Well, you are the worst!” retorted Mr. Brief, angrily. “When did I ever tell you that I belonged to a union?”
“Last Friday night at dinner, and in the presence of this goodly company,” said the Idiot. “You were bragging about it, too—said that no institution in existence had done more to uplift the moral tone of the legal profession; that through its efforts the corrupt practitioner and the shyster were gradually being driven to the wall—”
“Well, this beats me,” said Mr. Brief. “I recall telling at dinner on Friday night about the Bar Association—”
“Precisely,” said the Idiot. “That’s what I referred to. If the Bar Association isn’t a Lawyer’s Union Number Six of the highest type, I don’t know what is. It is conducted by the most brilliant minds in the profession; its honors are eagerly sought after by the brainiest laborers in the field of Coke and Blackstone; its stern, relentless eye is fixed upon the evil-doer, and it is an effective instrument for reform not only in its own profession, but in the State as well. What I would have the Housemaid’s Union do for domestic servants and for the home, the Bar Association does for the legal profession and for the State, and if the lawyers can do this thing there is no earthly reason why the housemaids shouldn’t.”