Herbert Quick

“ The judge was too deep, too ethically acute for him. Perhaps by long association he, John Smith, might grow in moral height and mental grasp, so as to——
“I don't know,” said Judge Thornton, “which is the worse—sale of the body, or barter of the soul. I don't mean that the body can be sold without the soul going with it, though Epictetus seems a case in point in favor of the separable-transaction theory; but if it can, sale of the soul would seem the more ruinous. ”

“ As a protection against telepathy he gave his whole attention to Judge Thornton's paper on “Lear.” The indescribable agony of the old king's frenzy, the whirling tempest of the tragedy in which he wandered to his doom clutched at the boy's heart. The wolfish Goneril and Regan, the sweet Cordelia, the bared gray head, the storm, the night—— By some occult warning John Smith knew that Nellie was not pleased with his absorption, and that the discussion had begun.
“This treatment is so original,” said the lady president. “Everybody must be full of questions. ”

“ I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the State college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up. Your loving son, ⁠ John Smith. ”

“ In—in my—business”—she looked into John Smith's girlish eyes and hesitated—“everything is uncertain. It's a feast or a famine. A wave of reform may strike the town to-morrow, and the lid goes on. The protection you pay for may be taken from you next week. You've no rights. You ain't human. So I fix the fifty a month for the old man while I can, see?”
“Gibbs—Gibbs!” said the judge. “Relation of yours?”
“In a way. Does it make any difference?”
“It goes to the consideration,” said the lawyer. ”

“ The judge went into his private office and came out with a thin slip of paper folded in the palm of one smooth, strong hand.
“Too bad you're not a full-fledged lawyer, John, instead of a beginner. I could use you a good deal. My practise is getting more extensive. I've just been retained as the general counsel of the gas company. Oh, all you have to do is to wait and make yourself indispensable! You'll be getting plums like that one of these days. It's a great game! Good night.”
Good night, indeed! There was no thunder and lightning like that on the heath when Lear went mad ”

“ Suddenly she had, to the mind of the susceptible John Smith, become a woman, with a woman's weakness and yearning over the departed Jim—of the blackness of whose life John had no means of taking the measure. He felt all at once that this person had shown feelings so like those he would have expected from his mother that it startled him.
“Oh, we're all alike!” said the judge when she had gone. “These things are worth the lawyer's study. Human nature—human nature! We must get above it and study it! Just ponder on the contradictions in the bases of life involved in this Slattery person and Mrs. ”

“ The Slattery person swept into the private office with a rustle of stiffest silks, reminding the youth of the corn-husks at home in shucking-time, leaving behind her a whiff of all the Orient. John Smith walked into her presence palpitating as at the approach to something terrible and daunting and mystically fateful to such as himself—as a sailor might draw warily near the black magnetic rocks, which, approached too closely, would draw the very nails from his ship and dissolve his craft in the billows. When Judge Thornton remarked by way of left-handed introduction that Mr. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1925, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 98 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”