We are all trying to square wisdom with our own aims and errors. Professional men, whose business is the giving of advice, are fully aware of this. Death is the only arbiter who can enforce his own writs, and it is not for man to speak a final word on any matter.
I was brought up to have an immense respect—reverence, even—for law. It seemed to me in my youth to embody a tremendous philosophy. Here, I used to say, as I pondered opinion and precedent,—here is the very flower and fruit of the wisdom of the ages. I little dreamed that both sides of every case may be supported by authorities of equal dignity. Imagine my bewilderment when I found that a case which is likely to prove weak before one infallible judge may be shifted with little trouble to another, equally infallible, but with views known to be friendly to the cause in question. I sojourned for a time in a judicial circuit where there was considerable traveling to be done by the court and bar. The lawyer who was most enterprising in securing a sleeping-car stateroom wherein to play poker—discreetly and not too successfully—with the judge, was commonly supposed to have the best chance of winning his cases.
Our neighbors’ failures are really of no use to us. “No Admittance” and “Paint” are not accepted by the curious world as warnings, but as invitations.
“A sign once caught the casual eye,
And it said, ‘Paint’;
And every one who passed it by,
Sinner or saint,
Into the fresh green color must
Make it his biz
A doubting finger-point to thrust,