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The boys got a number of letters from home, and these brought news that the law case Tad Sobber had instituted against the Stanhopes and the Lanings was being pushed vigorously. Mr. Rover wrote that he felt certain the shyster lawyer Sobber had on the case was going to present a great mass of "evidence," no doubt manufactured for the occasion. "It's a shame!" cried Tom after hearing this.
Jane and Penelope exchanged puzzled looks. "Your hair needs fixing, Mrs. Penelope," said Jane. "Come in the house for a minute." Pen clambered down obediently and Jane led her far into the parlor bedroom. "Your hair was all right," she whispered, "but I want to warn you. Oscar is just a great big innocent. He is crazy over anyone he thinks is smart. That Fleckenstein is a shyster lawyer.
Shyster, who came up this morning, when you and the General were doing light-artillery practice on the lawn. Please let me go to my room." But the brute stood immovable. As I advanced, I heard him cock his musket. "Good God!" thought I, "this is no joke, after all. This stupid stable-man may have loaded his musket. What if it should go off?
With your energy and charm, if the worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one of your picnics; and we may have luck. And O man! if we do pull it through, what a dashing operation it will be! What an advertisement! what a thing to talk of and remember all our lives! However," he broke off suddenly, "we must try the safe thing first. Here's for the shyster!"
Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of "shyster" calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of the sceptre above him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of his birth or glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him salary, $4,000 a year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.
"Nothing you have said seems to me to alter the situation." "Very well," he replied. "I guess that settles it. Knowing you and the Beekman breed! There's one thing I must say," he added as he stood in the doorway after bidding her good night "that old fellow Tutt has behaved pretty well, leaving you entirely alone this way. I always had an idea he was a sort of shyster.
The pickings incident to demoralized conditions looked rich to these men. Professional politicians, shyster lawyers, political gangsters, flocked to the spoil. In 1851 the lawlessness of mere physical violence had come to a head.
It was amazing, without parallel in the history of crime and yet ingenious, clever, full of the craft and cunning that had built up the shyster lawyer's reputation below the dead line. Jimmie Dale's lips were curiously thin now. So it was Stangeist! A Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a vengeance!
Two trifles, indeed, completed though they scarcely changed my conception of the Shyster. The first was observed in Gloucester, where we spent Sunday, and I proposed we should hear service in the cathedral.
The night was dark and windless: the street lit glimmeringly from end to end, lamps, house-windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools all contributing. From a public-house on the other side of the way, I heard a harp twang and a doleful voice upraised in the "Larboard Watch," "The Anchor's Weighed," and other naval ditties. Where had my shyster wandered?
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