He snatched readily enough at the chance of getting as good a lawyer as Gottlieb to defend him for ten dollars, and when he was acquitted made so much of it that there was hardly a prisoner in the Tombs who did not send for one of our policies to guard against future legal difficulties.

To all of these we offered free advice and a free trial upon the charges pending against them, as a sort of premium or inducement to become policy-holders, and in six months had over two hundred subscribers.

This meant in cash about two thousand dollars, but it necessitated defending any or all of them whenever they were so unfortunate as to run foul of the police, and as luck would have it out of the two hundred policy-holders forty-seven of them were arrested within the first six months--fifteen for burglary, eleven for robbery and assault, sixteen for theft, and five for murder.
These latter cases took all of Gottlieb's working hours for some seven and a half weeks, at the end of which time he threw up his hands and vowed never to insure anybody against anything again.
It was impossible for me to try any of the cases myself, as I was not as yet admitted to the bar, and the end of the matter was that we returned the premiums and cancelled the policies of the remaining one hundred and fifty-three insured.

This done, Gottlieb and I heaved sighs of mutual relief.
"You are a clever fellow, Quib," he acknowledged good-naturedly, "but in some ways you are ahead of your time.

You ought to have gone into life insurance or railroading.