I

SAT in my new attorney's office. I had just been admitted to the venerable fraternity

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of the Blank Bar. As I turned my ad

miring gaze from one part to another, I thought—perhaps it was prejudice—that I never saw a room into which, as from a natural taste and instinct, the wronged and oppressed portion of the community would flock more readily. It seemed exactly suited to the circumstances and wants of that numerous and highly respectable class of our fellow-citizens. It was large, well-lighted, and of easy access. It had no carpet, or any other sign of comfort or taste, both of which are generally esteemed incompatible with extensive legal attainments. One side was occupied by a large book-case, the green silk behind whose glass doors made an impenetrable mystery of the learning within, and whose mahogany had assumed a sympathetic similitude of hue with law-sheep.

And here let me indulge in a few words of advice to the young counsellor who is hovering in eager uncertainty between "that large and commodious office, recently occupied by Increase

S. Sawder, Esq.," and "that pleasant apartment, equally suitable for the artist or man of business, and whose situation, within a stone's throw of the post-office on the one hand, and the courthouse on the other, renders it so peculiarly eligible." You are in a fluttering hurry of doubt. ✨ You know that your fellow-student, Joe Bangs, is on the lookout. The hope of catching some stray clients of the great Mr. Sawder who belong to that excellent class, who, having once found their way, by accident or design, into an attorney's office, frequent the same forever thereafter, patronizing rather the locality than its happy possessor, and fully satisfied of the excellence of the law administered there,-provided the bust with the very dirty nose (the cabalistic term "CICERO" imprinted thereon being, they are firmly convinced, some classical allusion to the merits of General Washington as a patriot and soldier) still maintains its dignified stand on the bookshelves, the hope, I say, of securing the patronage of some of these almost decides you. At the same time you cannot but acknowledge the eligible situation of the other

office, "whose windows look upon a yard tastefully decorated with lilac and other flowering shrubs, thus combining the peculiar advantages of town and country life," and others, for which "see advertisement." You feel a secret, but unwillingly acknowledged, conviction, that, if the vicinity to the eating-houses had been properly set forth in the advertisement, you would have been overcome. As it is, you consult your friends. Factions arise, allusions to meeting at Philippi are considered in order, and you are farther from your decision than ever.

Now listen to an expert, as we say. Always take the advice of the book-case. You stare, but I am perfectly serious. If Jacques could "find books in running brooks," I will lay ten to one that he would be puzzled to find them on the shelves of half the young lawyers in practice, or in their heads either. Now one of the two is necessary, the shelves perhaps the There is everything in the air of a book-case. Never choose an office where there is a book-case with a foolish face. There is as much difference in them as in their employers.

more so.

One which, to the inexperienced eye, may appear of unexceptional character, shall yet seem uneasy, and, as it were, blush when a client stares at it, thereby exposing its vacuity by a look of conscious guilt. Another, just as empty, shall stand boldly up, and look bursting with unnumbered and unnumberable volumes of Coke and Blackstone, and other ponderously learned works of which most practitioners have barely heard, but which your book-case, if discreet, shall make the unwary client believe you have at your fingers' ends. Mine is one of these. In one remote and lonely corner of it nestles my economical law library, while its erudite air seems to assert positively that the few scattered volumes on my desk were crowded out for want of room.

This is one of my hobbies, and I see it has taken the bit between its teeth. I am not free to assert that a book-case is all. I only give it the chief place, and my young friends may be assured that a green booby of a book-case will eventually blunder out the secret entrusted to its charge. Next to them, in my judgment, stand

fire-proof safes. Get an office with a safe in it, if possible. If empty now, it has yet a prophetic fulness. It has at any rate a paulopost future air of papers too valuable to be lightly risked. There is dignity in them at the least, and an iron door left ajar with discriminating and deliberate carelessness, and disclosing a file of papers secured with red tape, may perhaps sow a good seed in the imagination of a client, and fill his mind with vague ideas of future elevations to red cushioned benches. In the most useless point of view, safes are worth having. The locks are constructed with such nicety that it is often both exhilarating and instructive to turn the bolt back and forth, and to hide the beautifully polished key, which secures such an infinite deal of nothing, in some unfindable spot.

There is much mystery in whiskers, also, those dressed by a line drawn from the lower tip of the ear to the corner of the mouth being esteemed by good judges the most suitable. Neither would I be so bold as to deny the effiof a quick-set-hedge cut of the hair. Some

cacy