"
"That distinguished engineer?" observed his visitor, who had been
waiting all the evening to broach the subject of his errand. "I have the
greatest admiration of him. Shall we call on him?"
"Why, yes, yes," answered Clayton, dubiously; "I'm not afraid of him.
I--goy! I owe him nothing. He is such a litigious fellow, though; so
persistent with it; _barratry_, _champetry_, mad incorrigibility:
he's the wildest man of genius alive. But come on!"
Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt reply came out:
"Come!"
A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoulders, and cloth
leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat in a nearly naked, carpetless
room, writing, his table surrounded by burning wax candles, and his
countenance was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him and
seized his hand:
"How is my friend Randel? The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant
engineer, to whom ideas, goy! are like persimmons on the tree, abundant,
but seldom ripe, and only good when frosted. How is he now and what is
he at?"
"Stand there," spoke the engineer, "and look at me while I read the
sentence I was finishing upon John Middleton Clayton of Delaware."
"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me
afire. Goy!"
"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let
their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to
suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that
residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's
bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are
fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than
wax.
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