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Thus it was that I secured my first slender foothold at the bar of New York, and it was not for several years that I discovered that the Toddleham who had written the book on Perpetuities was an entirely different person, belonging to another branch of the family. Of course I received no compensation for my services at Haight & Foster's, but that was the customary rule with all students.
I was cast upon the world utterly alone, save for the rather uncompromising and saturnine regard in which I was held by old Mr. Toddleham, my trustee. This antique gentleman inhabited a musty little office, the only furniture in which consisted of a worn red carpet, a large engraving of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and a table covered with green baize.
I am a Harvard man, born in Salem, and of an old Massachusetts family. Ever since I made up my mind as a boy to enter the law it has been my ambition to study in your office; and, I may add, it is also the earnest hope of my guardian, Mr. Toddleham." "Do you refer to the Mr. Toddleham of 'Toddleham on Perpetuities'?" he asked with some interest.
Yet at no time during my career would I have exchanged places with my honored parent or even with Mr. Tuckerman Toddleham, of Barristers' Hall, Boston. As I jot down these random reminiscences I am impressed in a singular fashion with the fact that my career consisted entirely in the making, or rather getting, of money and the spending of it.
"If I can," I retorted defiantly. "That would be better than fighting cocks and frittering your time away with play actors," said he. "Mr. Toddleham," I returned, "if I will agree to turn over a new leaf and give up my present associates, will you continue my allowance and let me stay on in Cambridge and study law?" "If you will agree to enter my office and study under my supervision yes."
In point of fact I was quite sure that he wanted no settlement and desired only revenge, and I realized what a fool I had been to make an enemy out of one who might have been an ally. In this embarrassing situation I bethought me of old Mr. Toddleham, and accordingly paid him an unexpected visit at Barristers' Hall.
There were the bookcases, with their glass doors and green-silk curtains; the threadbare carpet, the portrait of the Honorable Jeremiah Mason over the fireplace; the old mahogany desk; the little bronze paper- weight in the shape of a horse; the books, brown and faded with years; and at the desk I brushed my hand across my eyes at the desk sat old Tuckerman Toddleham himself!
It was a humid spring day, and I recall that the birds were twittering loudly in the maples back of the Probate Office. As befitted my station at the time of year, I was arrayed in a new beaver and a particularly fanciful pair of rather tight trousers. "Come in," squeaked Mr. Toddleham, and I entered easily. The old lawyer peered quizzically at me from behind his square- boned spectacles.
As I lingered there, like some outcast beast waiting for day to drive me to my lair, I envied, with a fierce hatred and with a bitter and passionate pity for myself, those to whom Fate had been more kind and given home and wife and children, or at least the affection of their fellow men, and I envied the lads I had known in college who led clean lives and who had shunned me they knew not why and the happy-go-lucky Quirk and his busy wife; and even old Tuckerman Toddleham, in his dingy office in Barristers' Hall.
The day after our arrival, Hawkins slept late and I slipped out about ten o'clock and wandering aimlessly came to Barristers' Hall, where twenty years before old Tuckerman Toddleham had his office. The day was warm and humid, like that upon which so long ago I had visited the old lawyer when a student at Harvard and had received from him my sentence.
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