Abbey - Page 2

perfect justice--small dice for little
cases and large dice for big ones. Philadelphia lawyers carry green
bags full of briefs, remarkable for everything but brevity; also
statutes, recognizances, tenures, double-vouchers, fines,
recoveries, indentures, not to mention quiddities, quillets, quirks
and quips. Philadelphia lawyers have high foreheads and many
clients. Lawyers are educated men, looked up to and respected by
all--this was the Abbey idea. Of course, it will be observed that it
was an idea that could be held by people only who had viewed lawyers
from a safe distance.

Fortunately for the Abbeys, they had really no more use for the
lawyers than they had for the two other Learned Professions. Their
idea of a lawyer was gained from seeing one pass their house every
morning at nine forty-five, for ten years. He wore a high hat, and
carried a gold-headed cane in one hand and a green bag in the other.
He lived on Walnut Street, below Ninth in a three-story house with
white marble steps and white shutters, tied with black strips of
bombazine in token of the death of a brother who passed out in
infancy.

Edwin should be a lawyer, and be an honor to the family name.

But alas! Edwin was small and had a low forehead and squint eyes. He
didn't care for books--all he would do was draw pictures. Now, all
children make pictures--before they can read, they draw. And before
they can draw they get the family shears and cut the pictures out of
"Harper's Weekly." This boy cut pictures out of "Harper's Weekly"
when he wore dresses, and when George William Curtis first filled
the Easy Chair. Edwin cut out the pictures, not because they were
especially bad, but because he, like all other children, was an
artist in the germ; and the artist instinct is to detach the thing,
lift it out, set it apart, and then give it away.

All children draw pictures, I said, and this is true, but most
children can be cured of the habit by patience and an occasional box
on the ear, judiciously administered. All children are sculptors,
too; that is to say, they want to make things out of mud or dough or
wax or putty; but no mother who sets her heart on clean guimpes and
pinafores can afford for a moment to indulge in such inclinations.
To give children dough, putty and the shears would keep your house
in a pretty litter--lawksadaisy!

Mrs. Abbey hid the shears, put the "Harper's" on a high shelf and
took the boy's pencils away, and threw the putty out into Fourth
Street, below Vine. Then the boy had tantrums, and as a compromise
got all his playthings back.

Yes, this squat, beetle-browed, and bow-legged boy had his way.
Beetle-browed, bow-legged folks usually do. Caesar and