Section 6:  First Cases; Choosing a Practice Site

Some time before that Court a young girl of unsavory reputation had been indicted for stealing sixty dollars, had been bailed out of jail and when the Court came on had secreted herself and her bail had Sam Berryhill, the constable, hunting her. The night after my walk I was sitting in the office smoking a cigar. Benedict had gone home and it was perhaps eleven o'clock, when the door opened and a long-legged lummox of a boy put his head in the door and asked me if his sister could see me, that she was the girl Berryhill was after, and that she wanted some counsel. Suddenly I recollected I was a lawyer and I told him to bring her on. He disappeared and in ten or fifteen minutes came back, ushering in the young lady who was nicely dressed and handsome. She told me her story and after subjecting her to as severe a cross examination as I could, I made up my mind that while she had put herself in a disgraceful position, she was not at all guilty of larceny and I told her to come right into Court in the morning and I would say she was ready for trial. The prosecutor was a man with a family and I thought could not afford to stand the exposure the trial of the case would develop. He had got his money back, had become dispossessed of it while on a drunken spree. Next morning I told his brother-in-law what the defense would be and shortly after I saw him talking rather savagely to the prosecutor, and he incontinently started to the hotel stable and got on his horse and started out of town. I then went into court and had the case called up, and there being no evidence the girl was acquitted. I had had my first case and came off victorious and my girl paid me ten dollars, my first fee, and her bail insisted on paying me a small fee for getting them out of trouble as her bail.

My old Uncle Joseph Campbell had got into a fight with old Peter Hoover. Uncle cut down a tree that Hoover claimed as a line tree and indicted him for a misdemeanor under an act of assembly for cutting down a line tree. Uncle Joe insisted on me trying his case. I was afraid of it and told him he had better have an older attorney, but he would not hear of it and so I was in for another suit. I consulted my boss and he told me I could beat Hoover if it was not a recognized line tree. So we went at it one afternoon of the same court week, and when the evidence was in on part of the Commonwealth, I was much relieved by the Court ruling that a tree that had been disputed for 20 years was not such a line tree as the act of assembly contemplated and so the prosecution failed and I was again victorious and I got another fee, although I did not do a thing but sit still during the trial. I think I got some thirty dollars during the week and I was astonished and delighted at my success. But I was not deceived -- I knew I had a great deal to learn before I was a lawyer.

After the Court I went home to rest a while and I walked over the fields and through the woods. There was a kind of a marshy pond up near the mountain. The Sunday before I first left home to go to school, I had wandered up there and cut the initials of my name on the smooth bark of a maple tree on the side of the pond, and now after eight years I again stood by the side of the pond and looked at the letters -- nearly grown over -- that I had cut when a green, country boy. I thought over the excellent feelings and anxiety I then had to get away from home and what grand things I expected to achieve and what an insignificant life as a farmer I had led. In contrasting this with my present position I felt disappointed. I had not been a failure altogether, but I had fallen far short of what I expected. Everything I got I had to work and drudge for, and I had misgivings that I had a long and rough road to travel before I could expect success as a lawyer. I had the same hesitating feeling as to what I should do next that had troubled me when I left College, and I could not resist the impression that I was better qualified to be a farmer than anything else. I had no notion of settling in Lewistown -- I had too many acquaintances there and relations in the county who might be mortified if I made a failure. I had lost much of the confidence I had when I inscribed my initials on the maple tree. I did not really believe that I could not with an effort succeed as a lawyer, but in all my calculations I seemed instinctively to fear that I might break down just when I should not and I could not shake off this impression. I became restless and discontented, rather despondent; in fact had the "blues."

There had been a half blood Indian at College from near Little Rock in Arkansas. His mother was the owner of a large plantation and several hundred slaves. He was a good-hearted, friendly fellow, but not smart, and often came to my room in the evenings to talk, and wanted me to go and settle in Little Rock and he would get me to be his mother's lawyer and felt very confident he could get me a good practice there. I had an indefinite idea that I would go there, and one day I mentioned it to my Father who was then fully as old as I am now. He said with some feeling that he would rather I would not go to that far off new country, that he thought my associations would be bad, that in the summer it was sickly, and he was getting old and if I went there he would hardly ever see me again; that if I would settle anywhere in the State, he would support me for five years if necessary. I saw it would hurt him if I went so far away and I told him I would not go.

My preceptor, Benedict, advised me to settle in Lancaster -- that I might have to wait a year or two for business and during that time I could profitably spend my time in reading, but that business would come and that he had no doubt I would succeed. I knew this was honest advice and I went to Lancaster and spent several days there. At that time there were a number of old lawyers there, Hopkins Norris, Fordney Frazier and others and a great many young lawyers, and I thought there was no show for me there. I am now satisfied I would have done well by settling there. The old lawyers died off in a few years and I would have had no great difficulty in establishing a practice, but I was distraught to occupy another field.