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certain imputation of influencing your client to unprofitable and endless litigation for selfinterested purposes, while "he was all along willing to settle it, but his attorney would not let him." I can suggest no better rule for an attorney to follow in cases of this kind than honestly to inform himself, by the opinion of an honest counsel, by which I mean a man who will give you credit, which few of them will do, for consulting your client's interest in disregard of your own, what is the proper course to pursue, and to take that course, utterly regardless of any reproach which the client may subsequently make.

There are clients, however, of the class despondent, who are neither chargeable with temper nor injustice, and such men impose on their legal adviser duties more akin to the physician's or the clergyman's than the lawyer's. I fell in with one of this description in very early life. I hate a sentimental tragedy,-"scenes of all kinds are a positive nuisance; but as professional adventures, when truly related, must partake of every hue, my readers will excuse me for troubling them with one; we shall turn again to fun with redoubled zest.

My friend Harris was a young man of unusual attainments: but the res angusta domi did not allow him to devote himself to professional life, for which, in any quiet and unobtrusive branch, he was peculiarly adapted. It often occurs to such men, that they follow literature or science just to the extent that humanizes the character, and gives exquisite refinement to the mental tone, but falls short of imparting that vigor of mind which can discriminate justly between merited and undeserved reproach, so as to set at naught the one, while they shun the other as the severest of human calamities. Harris found himself at the age of five-andtwenty, possessed of about two thousand pounds, the bequest of a fernale relative; having up to that period, languished away a petty patrimony of less than a fourth of that sum, spinning it out as best he could, till the patronage of a distant connexion could find him "an appointment" equal to his birth and education.

Harris's understanding was too good not to be aware that two thousand pounds would go but a little way towards maintaining him, while he acquired the rudiments of legal or medical instruction, and afterwards waited for

employment; but like many men of good understanding whom I have met with in a life now not a very short one, he fell into the mistake of supposing that commercial business is so simple and inartificial as to allow any man of common sense and common prudence, to embark in it with certain profit. He inquired for and soon found "a highly respectable man that wanted a partner with a few thousand, who might take an active part, or not, in the concern, as he might feel inclined." We all know in our profession, that such "opportunities " are to be found daily by the score; but my poor friend was not an attorney, and had no attorney at his elbow. He took the precaution, however, of employing an accountant to examine the opportunity" books; and the accountant overhauled waste-book, and billbook, and pass-book, and ledger, and all the double entry and other Sybilline leaves of trading mystery, till his brains were addled, if he ever had any. Of course he reported all right; and in an evil hour, Harris invested his little capital in "the concern." He was not long in discovering that his partner was a "very clever fellow," and that he himself knew nothing:

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hence, with the natural modesty of a welleducated man, and with the natural confidence of an inexperienced one, he left all to the management of his "very clever " partner, and

shrunk back into the station of a mere counting-house clerk: the transition to a sleeping, and eventually to an absentee partner, was a matter of course. From this slumber he was abruptly awakened about two years from its commencement, by finding that his "very clever" and very active partner had taken shipping one fine morning for America! No sooner was it known, than claims came pouring in from all directions: goods supplied on commission, goods consigned from abroad, all abruptly found owners; but neither the owners nor Harris could discover the goods: bills accepted and bills dishonored fell from the skies like leaves in October; but the consideration for them, or the funds to meet them, were alike evanescent. Harris found himself in a labyrinth of liability, a perfect wilderness of paper and arithmetic, from which extrication appeared hopeless-ruin certain and irretrievable. This was his position when he first applied to me. Amazed, bewildered, and lost, the very excite

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ment of extreme misfortune, and hourly perplexity, at first kept him active and alive. I called his creditors together, explained to them his situation, begged their indulgence for time to look about us, and subject to certain angry curses, and still more provoking costs incurred by carrion attorneys on the principle of first come first served, I succeeded in getting hostile proceedings suspended for a month. month enabled me to sift many of the most clamorous demands, and as is usual in such cases, I found the most clamorous, the most equivocal. I silenced half-a-dozen by gentle intimations of partnership liability arising out of their dealings, others I disposed of on the ground of fraud, and I began to see my way clearly to a decent dividend, provided affairs were wound up under a trust deed. This was all satisfactory; but poor Harris, after the first storm had subsided, became nervous, agitated, and helpless, as he was ignorant, as a child. He was with me daily; but it was only to bemoan himself, and ask unmeaning questions, or tender unavailing service. Advice, consolation, encouragement, were all thrown away; "he cared little for his money-he despised his

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