Had I the time I should like nothing better than to paint for my own satisfaction an old-fashioned law office as it was conducted in the 'seventies--its insistent note of established respectability, the suppressed voices of its young men, their obvious politeness to each other and defence to clients, their horror at anything vulgar, the quiet, the irritating quiet, Mr.Wigger's red wig--he was the engrossing clerk--the lifelessness of the atmosphere of the place, as if nothing real ever happened there, and as if the cases we prepared and tried were of interest only on account of the legal points involved.

When I was there, filing papers in their dusty packages, I used to feel as though I was fumbling among the dust of clients long since dead and gone.
The place stifled and depressed me.

I longed for red blood and real life.

There I was, acting as a clerk on nothing a year, when uptown I was in the centre of the whirlpool of existence.

It was with ill-concealed gratification that I used daily at one o'clock to enter the library, bow to whatever member of the firm happened to be there, remove a book from the shelves and slip out of the door.