Arthur Cheney Train

“ What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean this," began Tutt, clearing his throat as if he were addressing twelve good and true men—"a camel is obviously an unusual—not to say peculiar—animal to be roosting over there in that attic. It is an exotic—if I may use that term. It is as exotic as a brass bed from Connecticut would be, or is, in Damascus or Lebanon. Now, therefore, a camel will as assuredly give cause for trouble in New York as a brass bed in Bagdad!"
"The right thing often makes trouble if put in the wrong place," pondered Mr. Tutt. ”

“ By this time the kettle was boiling cheerfully, quite as if no such thing as criminal law existed at all, and Miss Wiggin began to make the tea.
"All the same," she ruminated, "people—particularly very poor people—are often driven to crime by necessity."
"It's Nature's first law," contributed Tutt brightly.
Mr. Tutt uttered a snort of disgust.
"It may be Nature's first law, but it's about the weakest defense a guilty man can offer. 'I couldn't help myself' has always been the excuse for helping oneself!" ”

“ A hypersensitive conscience cost our widowed client ten thousand dollars! I say, leave well enough alone."
"'Well enough'! 'Well enough'!" snarled Mr. Tutt. "Are you going to constitute yourself the judge of what is well enough for a young man's soul? I give you fair warning, Tutt: he's heard your side of it, but before he gets through he's going to hear mine as well!"
Samuel Tutt turned a faint pink in the region of his collar.
"Why, certainly, Mr. Tutt!" he stammered. "Do so, by all means!"
"You jolly well bet I will!" replied Mr. Tutt, jamming on his stovepipe. ”

“ Tutt returned to his own library at the house on Twenty-third Street and paced up and down before the antiquated open grate, inhaling quantities of what Mr. Bonnie Doon irreverently called "hay smoke," and pondering deeply upon the evils that men do to one another, until the dawn peered through the windows and he bethought him of the all-night lunch stand round the corner on Tenth Avenue, and there sought refreshment.
"Salvatore," he remarked to the smiling son of the olive groves who tended that bar of innocence, "the worst crook in the world is the man who does evil for mere money." ”

“ The marriage itself is an entirely different thing. When a marriage is performed and consummated the parties have changed their condition; they bear an entirely new relationship to society, which, as represented by the state, acquires an interest in the transaction, and all you can say about it is that whereas they were both single before, they are married now, and that in the eyes of the law their status has been altered to one as distinct and clearly defined as that which exists between father and son, guardian and ward or master and slave."
"Hear! Hear!" remarked Tutt. ”

“ As it is, I must direct an acquittal. The defendant is discharged upon this indictment. But I will hold him in bail for the action of another grand jury."
"In which event we shall have another equally good defense, Your Honor," Mr. Tutt assured him.
"I don't doubt it, Mr. Tutt," returned the judge good-naturedly. "Your client seems to have loved not wisely but too well." And they all poured out happily into the corridor—that is, all of them except Caput and the two ladies, who remained seated upon their bench gazing fiercely and disdainfully at each other like two tabby cats on a fence. ”

“ As Payson Clifford trudged along the shadows of the docks he became obsessed with a curious feeling that Tutt and Mr. Tutt were both there before him; Mr. Tutt—a tall, benevolent figure carrying a torch in the shape of a huge, black, blazing stogy that beckoned him onward through the darkness; and behind him Tutt—a little paunchy red devil with horns and a tail—who tweaked him by the coat and twittered, "Don't throw away twenty-five thousand dollars! The best way is to leave matters as they are and let the law settle everything. ”

“ The law only lets a man will away a certain proportion of his property to charity—says it isn't right for him to do so, if he leaves a family. Now suppose your father had given all his property to charity, would you feel obliged to impoverish yourself for the benefit of a Home for Aged Mariners?"
"Really," replied the bewildered Payson. "I don't know. But anyway I'm satisfied you're quite right and I'm tremendously obliged. However," he added musingly, "I'd rather like to know who this Sadie Burch is!"
"If I were you, young man," advised the lawyer sagely, "I wouldn't try to find out!" ”

“ Tutt. "For everybody would be free to make himself the judge of when he ought to respect the law and when he oughtn't. We can easily imagine that the law would come out at the small end of the horn."
"In matters of conscience—which, I take it, is the same thing as one's sense of honor—one has got to be one's own judge," declared Miss Wiggin firmly. ”

“ It is improbable that Ephraim Tutt was conscious of what drew him to Danny Lowry, but drawn he was; and the reason for it was that the fundamental mainspring of the life of each was love—in the case of the man of law for those of his fellow men who suffered through foolishness or poverty or weaknesses or misfortune; and in that of his more humble counterpart, whose limitations precluded his understanding of more endowed human beings, for the dumb animals, who must mutely suffer through the foolishness or poverty or weakness or misfortune of their owners and masters. ”

“ For any violator of the law she had the uttermost abhorrence, and the only weakness in her ethics arose out of her failure to discriminate between relative importances, for she undoubtedly regarded the sale of a glass of beer after the closing hour as being quite as reprehensible as grand larceny or the bearing of false witness. To her every judge must be a learned, wise and honorable man because he stood for the enforcement of the law of the land, and she never questioned whether or not that law was wise or otherwise, which latter often—it must be confessed—it was not. ”

“ Miss Beekman did not go to bed at all that night. Until a late hour she conferred in the secrecy of her Fifth Avenue library with her gray-haired solicitor, who, in some mysterious way, merely over the telephone, managed to induce the newspapers to omit any reference to his client's contemptuous conduct in their morning editions.
"There's no way out of it, my dear," he said finally as he took his leave—he was her father's cousin and very fond of her—"this judge has the power to send you to jail if he wants to—and dares to! It's an even chance whether he will dare to or not. ”

“ He took his chance!" admonished the judge.
Slowly Miss Althea's indignation rose as she perceived the dastardly trick which O'Brien had played upon her. Already she suspected that the judge was only masquerading in the clothing of a gentleman. With a white face she turned to Mr. Tutt.
"Does the law require me to answer, Mr. Tutt?" she inquired.
"Do not ask questions—answer them," ordered Babson brusquely, feeling the change in her manner. "You are a witness for the people—not the defendant."
"I am not a witness against O'Connell!" she declared. ”

“ Without you Tutt & Tutt would not be Tutt & Tutt. My junior partner may be the eyes and legs of the firm and I may be some other portion of its anatomy, but you are its heart and its conscience. Out with it! What rascality portends? What bird of evil omen hovers above the offices of Tutt & Tutt? Spare not an old man bowed down with the sorrows of this world! ”

“ A lady's honor and reputation were sacred, and her knight was prepared instantly to defend it with the last drop of his blood. A reflection on her honesty was almost as unbearable as one upon her virtue. Logically, the unwritten law ought to permit women to break their contracts and do practically anything they see fit."
"They do, don't they—the dear things!" sighed Bonnie.
"I remember," interjected Tutt brightly, "when it was the unwritten law of Cook County, Illinois—that's Chicago, you know—that any woman could kill her husband for the life-insurance money. Seriously!" ”

“ As the orphaned Payson, ensconced in lonely state in one of the funeral hacks, was carried at a fast trot down Broadway towards the offices of Tutt & Tutt, he consoled himself for his loss with the reflection that this was, probably, the last time he would ever have to see any of his relatives. Never in his short life had he been face to face with such a gathering of unattractive human beings. He hadn't imagined that such people existed. They oughtn't to exist. The earth should be a lovely place, its real estate occupied only by cultured and lovely people. ”

“ Is it the point that if this old man pretended he was a horse doctor when he wasn't he has to go to jail?"
"Sure."
"But the other man pretended he was a doctor."
"But he was trying to trick the defendant."
"But the first feller wasn't a doctor any more than the other feller. Why not convict the first feller?"
There was a chorus of groans from about the table.
"You ought not to be here at all!" remarked the salesman acidly. "You're simple-minded, you are! You keep still now and vote with the majority, or we'll tell the judge on you!" ”

“ Lack of proof as to the first marriage in Chicago, for instance. How are you going to prove he wasn't divorced?"
"That's matter of defense," retorted Peckham.
"What's a little bigamy between friends, anyway?" ruminated the old lawyer. "It's a kind of sumptuary offense. People will marry. And it's good policy to have 'em. If they happen to overdo it a little—"
"Well, if I do chuck the darn thing out what will you give me in return?" asked Peckham. "Of course, bigamy isn't my favorite crime or anything like that. I'm no bloodhound on matrimonial offenses. How'll you trade?" ”

“ Tutt's voice rose indignantly—"our greatest mistake is to assume that crimes of violence are the most dangerous to the state, for they are not. They cause greater disturbance and perhaps more momentary inconvenience, but they do not usually evince much moral turpitude. After all, it does no great harm if one man punches another in the head, or even in a fit of anger sticks a dagger in him. The police can easily handle all that. ”

“ The meanest and most detestable of men, beside whom an honest burglar is a sympathetic human being, may yet never violate a criminal statute."
"That's so!" said Tutt. "Take Badger, for instance."
"How often we defend cases," ruminated his partner, "where the complainant is just as bad as the prisoner at the bar—if not worse."
"And of course," added Tutt, "you must admit there are a lot of criminals who are criminals from perfectly good motives. Take the man, for instance, who thrashes a bystander who insults his wife—the man's wife, I mean, naturally." ”

“ Sardi Babu turned white.
"I said nothing!" he declared, trembling. "I made no complaint. The gendarme will corroborate me. What care I where Kasheed Hassoun stables his camel?"
Maloof shouldered his way up to him, and grasping the Maronite by the beard muttered in Arabic: "Thou dog! Go confess thy sins! For by the Holy Cross thou assuredly hast not long to live!"
Murphy seized Babu by the arm.
"Come on!" he ordered threateningly. "Make good now!" And he led him up the steps, the throng pressing close upon his heels. ”

“ For every statute in print there are a hundred that have no tangible existence, based on our sense of decency, of duty and of honor, which are equally controlling and which it has never been found necessary to reduce to writing, since their infraction usually brings its own penalty or infringes the more delicate domain of private conscience where the crude processes of the criminal law cannot follow. ”

“ If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not wish to run the chance of having their lawyer shame them out of it. That is their own business. And it should be! The law presents sufficiently perplexing problems for the lawyer without his seeking trouble in the dubious complexities of his client's morals! Anyhow, that is the regulation way a lawyer looks at it and that is the way to hold one's clients. ”

“ The elder lawyer sucked meditatively on the fag end of his stogy before replying.
"Why not sue him?" Mr. Tutt inquired.
"But suppose he didn't have any money?" replied Tutt disgustedly.
"Then why not have him arrested?" continued Mr. Tutt. "It's libelous per se to call a lawyer a shyster."
"Even if he is one," supplemented Miss Minerva Wiggin ironically, as she removed her paper cuffs preparatory to lighting the alcohol lamp under the teakettle. "The greater the truth the greater the libel, you know!" ”

“ An' to Judge Harrison? No, no! Nothin' doin'! If you start anything like that I'll roast the life out of you!"
Delany spat as near Hogan's foot as he elegantly could.
"You're a hell of a feller, you are!" he growled, and turned his back on him as upon Satan.
The brick that Terry McGurk hurled as a matter of principle through Froelich's window produced almost as momentous consequences as the want of the horseshoe nail did in Franklin's famous maxim. It is the unknown element in every transaction that makes for danger. ”

“ Tutt, "Shakspere says in 'Julius Caesar' that 'Nature must obey necessity'; while Rabelais says 'Necessity has no law'; but the quotation we familiarly use is 'Necessity knows no law except to conquer,' which is from Publilius Syrus."
"From who?" cried Tutt in ungrammatical surprise.
"Never mind!" soothed Miss Wiggin. "Anyway, it wasn't Raphael B. Hogan."
"Who certainly completely satisfies your definition so far as preying upon the ignorant and helpless is concerned," said Mr. Tutt. "That man is a human hyena—worse than a highwayman." ”

“ But all the same that letter isn't worth the paper it's written on—as matter of law."
"But why not?" demanded Payson. "What better evidence could the courts desire of the wishes of a testator than such a letter?"
"The reason is simple enough!" replied Tutt, settling himself in a comfortable position. "In the eye of the law no property is ever without an owner. It is always owned by somebody, although the ownership may be in dispute. ”