Practice of Law in New York City, had taken the son of a client into his employ, he saw the boy in the elevator, and pleased at remembering his face, queried pleasantly "if he was still at Williams?" The corporation shop of which he is the power and superintendent requires two whole floors in a large office building. From the outer waiting room you see boys dash ing in all directions, clerks and stenograph ers laden with papers, issuing here and there from noiseless doors; and all about, piled to the ceiling, great lettered, iron boxes, filled with the papers of fruitful cases. In these particulars the office is no differ ent from say fifteen other offices in New York, almost as large. Sometimes the whole front room is taken up with counters, cages and bars, which make you think you have wandered by mistake into a bank. In some "shops," too, the elevator disgorges into the outer office, adding its continual bang to the rush and confusion. The library in these establishments will be complete and sometimes fitted with leather chairs and even with heavy plush cur tains. Private offices of the partners are apt to be in good taste. The great man looks out at you over the highly polished plain of two large desks. The wall behind him may be burlapped, and like as not, hung with old engravings, heavily framed in black, of early EnH'-sh justices. "This is Mr. Murray, Bramwell, who comes highly recommended by Mr. M.erger; of course, anything we can do for Mr. Mer ger and Mr. Murray we shall want to do"— and Bramwell's partner was gone. "Does your father live in New York?" asked Bramwell. This is always the opening question. Rents are high, and business from any source is acceptable. As a friend who had been indifferently successful and is cor respondingly cynical said to me, Nothing is cheap in New York but brains. If you can bring them business well and good; if not— bah! Goldsmith meant New York when he
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spoke of the 'place where wealth accumulates and men decay.'" After some talk I reminded the great at torney that I had known him by correspond ence over an intercollegiate debate. Now notice the genius for time saving. Instead of "Ah, indeed, when was that?" he replied, "I remember it well," although as I recalled later it was a lawyer of the same name but with different initials to whom I had written. Bramwell is a great, shaggy man, whose talk takes the form of very personal ques tions in such rapid succession as to make satisfactory replies impossible. "He goes into court, said a disgruntled clerk, "and without saying a word there, sends a whack ing bill for glaring at the judge and mussing papers." Every few minutes while I was being cross-examined and looked over, the telephone on his table would buzz and allow him to vituperate or cajole the other end of the wire. Question: "Do you have to live on what you are going to make here?" Answer (evasively, because imagining a replication of "Impossible" to an affirmative reply): "I should like to." O. "But do you have to?" Ans. "No. "Well, that's bad! I always had to, and there's nothing 'll drive a man like earning the drachmae he lives on. Don't come to New York at all," he continued. "It is and has to be a heartless place. No one is im portant here, and we simply haven't time for the amenities. You boys come down from the schools and we lead you a dog's life; and what seems to distress you most, is that there is no kindergarten to make things pleasant. The humanity in a man is jammed out of him when he comes down in the cars; we contribute our youth and our dreams and turn out—a corporation's brief." The fact that there are so many very large offices to absorb business, results naturally, in many small ones to subsist on the leavings.
