Читать книгу The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him - Paul Leicester Ford - Страница 19

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The middle of July found Peter in New York, eager to begin his grapple with the future. How many such stormers have dashed themselves against its high ramparts, from which float the flags of "worldly success;" how many have fallen at the first attack; how many have been borne away, stricken in the assault; how many have fought on bravely, till driven back by pressure, sickness or hunger; how few have reached the top, and won their colors!

As already hinted, Peter had chosen the law as his ladder to climb these ramparts. Like many another fellow he had but a dim comprehension of the struggle before him. His college mates had talked over professions, and agreed that law was a good one in New York. The attorney in his native town, "had known of cases where men without knowing a soul in a place, had started in and by hard work and merit had built up a good practice, and I don't see why it can't be done as well in New York as in Lawrence or Lowell. If New York is bigger, then there is more to be done." So Peter, whose New York acquaintances were limited to Watts and four other collegians, the Pierces and their fashionables, and a civil engineer originally from his native town, had decided that the way to go about it was to get an office, hang up a sign, and wait for clients.

On the morning after his arrival, his first object was a lodging. Selecting from the papers the advertisements of several boarding-houses, he started in search of one. Watts had told him about where to locate, "so as to live in a decent part of the city," but after seeing and pricing a few rooms near the "Avenue," about Thirtieth Street, Peter saw that Watts had been thinking of his own purse, rather than of his friend's.

"Can you tell me where the cheaper boarding-houses are?" he asked the woman who had done the honors of the last house.

"If it's cheapness you want, you'd better go to Bleecker Street," said the woman with a certain contemptuousness.

Peter thanked her, and, walking away, accosted the first policeman.

"It's Blaker Strate, is it? Take the Sixth Avenue cars, there beyant," he was informed.

"Is it a respectable street?" asked Peter.

"Don't be afther takin' away a strate's character," said the policeman, grinning good-naturedly.

"I mean," explained Peter, "do respectable people live there?"

"Shure, it's mostly boarding-houses for young men," replied the unit of "the finest." "Ye know best what they're loike."

Reassured, Peter, sought and found board in Bleecker Street, not comprehending that he had gone to the opposite extreme. It was a dull season, and he had no difficulty in getting such a room as suited both his expectations and purse. By dinner-time he had settled his simple household goods to his satisfaction, and slightly moderated the dreariness of the third floor front, so far as the few pictures and other furnishings from his college rooms could modify the effect of well-worn carpet, cheap, painted furniture, and ugly wall-paper.

Descending to his dinner, in answer to a bell more suitable for a fire-alarm than for announcing such an ordinary occurrence as meals, he was introduced to the four young men who were all the boarders the summer season had left in the house. Two were retail dry-goods clerks, another filled some function in a butter and cheese store, and the fourth was the ticket-seller at one of the middle-grade theatres. They all looked at Peter's clothes before looking at his face, and though the greetings were civil enough, Peter's ready-made travelling suit, bought in his native town, and his quiet cravat, as well as his lack of jewelry, were proof positive to them that he did not merit any great consideration. It was very evident that the ticket-seller, not merely from his natural self-assertion but even more because of his enviable acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in the way of free passes, was the acknowledged autocrat of the table. Under his guidance the conversation quickly turned to theatrical and "show" talk. Much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull. It was made the worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before the newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to him. To make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions.

"Do you like—?" a popular soubrette of the day.

"What, never seen her? Where on earth have you been living?"

"Oh? Well, she's got too good legs to waste herself on such a little place."

They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing interest in Peter. One indeed did ask him what business he was in.

"I haven't got to work yet," answered Peter

"Looking for a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage. So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves. When time had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods clerks) their respect for him considerably increased. He could not, however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them. After the manly high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked them to his. Peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found reading or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way of passing his evenings.

The morning after this first day in New York, Peter called on his friend, the civil engineer, to consult him about an office; for Watts had been rather hazy in regard to where he might best locate that. Mr. Converse shook his head when Peter outlined his plan.

"Do you know any New York people," he asked, "who will be likely to give you cases?"

"No," said Peter.

"Then it's absolutely foolish of you to begin that way," said Mr. Converse. "Get into a lawyer's office, and make friends first before you think of starting by yourself. You'll otherwise never get a client."

Peter shook his head. "I've thought it out," he added, as if that settled it.

Mr. Converse looked at him, and, really liking the fellow, was about to explain the real facts to him, when a client came in. So he only said, "If that's so, go ahead. Locate on Broadway, anywhere between the Battery and Canal Street." Later in the day, when he had time, he shook his head, and said, "Poor devil! Like all the rest."

Anywhere between the Battery and Canal Street represented a fairly large range of territory, but Peter went at the matter directly, and for the next three days passed his time climbing stairs, and inspecting rooms and dark cells. At the end of that time he took a moderate-sized office, far back in a building near Worth Street. Another day saw it fitted with a desk, two chairs (for Peter as yet dreamed only of single clients) and a shelf containing the few law books that were the monuments of his Harvard law course, and his summer reading. On the following Monday, when Peter faced his office door he felt a glow of satisfaction at seeing in very black letters on the very newly scrubbed glass the sign of: