If he have in him any metal besides brass, there is a suggestion of hope to be found in the words of an unrecognized poet who sang: — Tell me not there is no lot for lawyers, young and thin To fill by strife in this dark life of politics and sin. With modesty he 'll tread, you'll see, bright meadows some fine day. Till he reach this lot where his ancestors rot in sym pathetic clay. So, kind reader, whether judge, advocate, or yourself an embryonic Justinian, look not with scorn upon the young lawyer. Rather help him on his way that there may be fewer of us. Old judges smile with somewhat the same cordiality upon the young lawyer that they bestow upon the prisoner. They are both being tried, to be sure, but is it not fair to believe one, as well as the other, innocent until proved guilty? No, this would violate all precedent. Not a case can be found to support it. The young lawyer is always guilty — guilty beyond reasonable, or, in fact, imaginable doubt. He has intruded where " Angels fear to tread" — and never do! And with the exception of a few shyly aimed blows at the omnipresent cuspidore, he must make no attack, unless he would suffer annihilation. Let us imagine, though, for the moment that the young lawyer has risen! His face wreathed in sort of damnum absque injuria wrinkles! He has assumed the necessary frown supposed to accompany intelligence! What next? Does the judge lean forward with eager expectancy to catch the first word? No, he tilts back with bored disinterestedness to think what train he '11 catch for his suburban home. But the jury watch him, — poor fellow! In a Mississippi case,' we are told that 1 Garvin v. State, 52 Miss. 207.
"Juries may use their eyes as well as their cars." What a silly dictum! Those jurors' eyes wouldn't close by command of the whole United States artillery. Every one of the twenty-four is riveted upon the young lawyer as he starts speaking. The same cheerless stare that greeted onion weeds last week, the farmer jury now give the unripe advocate. And as these yeomen of the soil look upon the puerile nicety of the unsoiled, they inwardly chuckle, " I wander what he knows about it, enyhow." Sometimes at the end of a long and hard fought trial the young attorney for the de fense will have his eloquent plea extin guished by some such injudicious advice from court to jury as the following1: " You will be left to determine between the de mands of public justice and the defense of the prisoner at bar." Most of the trials of the young lawyer are outside the court room, for — to take the lee-way of an obiter dictum — is it not trying to him to have no trials? There is one class of these disappointed young men, however, that we do actually pity. It is made up of hard workers. Of poor young men who, isolated in barren and cheerless rooms, thumb their Blackstone from morn till eve — faithful to their task, though dis dained by an unsympathetic world. De spite the numerous jeers at him and jokes that have risen and set, this young lawyer will always be an indigenous disfigurement of our "fair" country. And, even if he be never known except to a few kind Sa maritans of the legal profession, some day when he has filled his " lot," others will offer him posthumous praise. But, though their words ring as gold, there still remains an alloy of injustice. 1 State v. Brooks, 4 Wash. 328.
