Coming one day from a County Court, where I had had a successful day, and humming a little tune, whom should I meet but my friend Morgan ——.  He was a very pleasant man, what is called a nice man, of a quiet, religious turn of mind, and nobody was ever more painstaking to push himself along.  He was a great stickler for a man’s doing his duty, and was possessed with the idea that, getting on as I was, it was my duty to refuse to take a brief in the County Court.

Coming up to me on the occasion I refer to, Morgan said, “What, you here, Hawkins!  I believe you’d take a brief before the devil in h——.”

I was quite taken aback for the moment by the use of such language.  If he had not been so religious a man, perhaps I should not have felt it so much; as it was, I could hardly fetch my breath.

When I recovered my equanimity I answered, “Yes, Morgan, I would, and should get one of my devils to hold it.”

He seemed appeased by my frank avowal, for he loved honesty almost as much as fees.

CHAPTER XVII.

APPOINTED QUEEN’S COUNSEL—­A SERIOUS ILLNESS—­SAM LEWIS.

On January 10, 1859, the Lord Chancellor did me the honour of recommending my name to Her Most Gracious Majesty, and I was raised to the rank and dignity of a Queen’s Counsel.

This is a step of doubtful wisdom to most men in the legal profession, for it is generally looked upon as the end of a man’s career or the beginning.  I had no doubt about the propriety of the step; it had been the object of my ambition, and I believe I should unhesitatingly have acted as I did even if it had been the termination of my professional life.  My idea was to go forward in the career I had chosen.  The junior work, if it had not lost its emoluments, no longer possessed the pleasurable excitement of the old days.  It was never my ambition merely to “mark time;” that is unsatisfactory exertion, and leads no whither.

But enough; I took silk, and a new life opened before me.  I was a leader.

My business rolled on in ever-increasing volume, so that I had to fairly pick my way through the constant downpour of briefs, but was always pressed forward by that useful institution known as the “barrister’s clerk.”

Whatever business overwhelms the counsel, no amount of it would disconcert the clerk, and it is wonderful how many briefs he can arrange in upstanding attitude along mantelpieces, tables, tops of dwarf cupboards, windows—­anywhere, in fact, where there is anything to stand a brief on—­without that gentleman feeling the least exhausted.  It would take as long to wear him out as to wear to a level the rocks of Niagara.  The loss of a brief to him is almost like the loss of an eye.  It would take a week after such a disaster to get the right focus of things.

My clerk came rushing into my room one day so pale and excited that I wondered if the man had lost his wife or child.  He did not leave me long in suspense as soon as he could articulate his words.