The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-16
THE LAWYER AS HE IS DEPICTED
 IN FICTION.

The Baltimore Sun, in it's study O types in fiction, pays it's respects to thu
 lawyer in this fashion: Sometimes ht
 is old, sometimes young; sometimes en- | thusiastic, sometimes cold; but always
 with certain persistent qualities He is | always reticent; he believes that iI mystery is found the key to success
 He always knows far more than he ad-
 mits-until the last chapter or so Usually he is the depository of tremen- dous secrets which, be he villain ol righteous man, he guards most jealous ly for the sake of his clients interests
 or of his own, as the case and the needs
 of the story may require. He may be
 cold and adamantne, like MT. Tullk-
 inghorn in Bleak House:' he may be
 benevolent and cheery, like MT. Too
 good in The Last Chronicle of Barset; but he is always Secretive. He knows d vast deal more than he thinks it well
 to show, even to his clients, does our
 lawyer Those unconsdered trihes
 which bear no meaning to his clients
 are to him so many clews by which he
 shall enter the labyrinth and pluck out
 the heart of its mystery. For where
 there is a lawyer in fiction there also
 is invariably mystery. or at least a
 grave legal question. To introduce a
 lawyer merely as man does not seem
 to be among the possibilities of novel; writing. According to our novelists, the only excuse for the existence of mem-
 bers of the legal profession is the de-
 velopment oe blot
 And your lawyer of fiction is always
 another Joey Bagstock; he is sly, sir,
 devlish sly He sees sermons in
 stones and books in running brooks,
 though he by no means carries out the
 remainder of the quotation and finds
 good in everything On the contrary, the lawyer, according to the novelists. is q confirmed pessimist He believes
 most firmly in the doctrine of total de- pravity, and he applies it to the whole of humanity-except, occasionally, to the persecuted hero or heroine, in whom his faith, against all evidence of circumstances, is sometimes so unques-
 tioning as to amount to superstition. To ward the rest of mankind the law yer preserves an attitude of constant suspicion. He is always on the look out for admissions, and he finds them where even the reader sees nothing but plain statement of fact He displays his slyness in many ways, but chiefly in the manner in which he soothes and assures a frightened or reluctant wit ness, whether in the box or the office. He leads him on until the unfortunate witness has given some damaging tes
 timony against the cause which lies nearest to his heart No witness can resist the slyness of the lawyer of fic
 ton.
 And he is keen. He scents unsus- pected facts as the corbies were once supposed to scent carrion. Indeed, he is prestidlgitator of facts, our lawyer; he takes in his hand hat and extracts therefrom a rabbit-or a serpent. Nor method of inferior conjurors; it was really there all the time, though the wearers of the hat had believed it in- visible to mortal eye. But what can es- cape the keen glance of the lawyer of fiction? Even q rabbit in a hat is not hidden from his marvellous sight This quality of preternatural keenness dis plays itself in a variety of ways, but chiefly in tendency to bounce. He is always bouncing, this typical lawyer. His methods of bouncing are different according to his variety in his class or type; but the end is the same. His manner of bouncing may be the steal thy approach of the tiger, followed by one tremendous leap that lays his vic- tim low, or it may be the sudden paw stroke of the lion surprised In its lair; but it is always effective and charac- teristic. He never pounces intellectual ly, whereby he displays his superiority over other carnivora, which sometimes fail in the aim of their leap. It is beau tiful--to the onlooker-to watch him his distance and wait until his victim has been lulled into a false se- curity, and then make his fatal spring. Nor does your lawyer confine himself in this to the exigencies of his profes sion; he introduces the practice into the of social intercourse. Here, too he is keen and fatal. It is always the lawyer, if he be on the scene, who puts his firm hanr upon the metaphys lcal or material fallacy and brushes it to nothingness in his grasp. In these things, as in the subtle questions of mystery, he is infallible. It seems to be his conception of life to shatter illusions and expose to scorn the errors as well as the crimes of his neighbors, He has different ways of loing these things. Sometimes he is genial, sometimes caustic; but he Is all ways in the right, as far as goes the in .ellectual aspect of the question. He nay be morally deficient ven to posi- i've depravity, but Intellectually he is always of the highest type. And this | eads us to another quality of the law ,er of fiction He is always an lntellec- l ual giant. It is a canon of the novel, | sts that mediocrity cannot be associa- | ed with the legal profession. If the | nan of law ever seems to tailin this | espect, we know that the fault lies | with the execution, and not with the |