When my wife and I first came to New York our aims and ideals were simple enough.  I had letters to the head of a rather well-known firm on Wall Street and soon found myself its managing clerk at one hundred dollars a month.  The business transacted in the office was big business—­corporation work, the handling of large estates, and so on.  During three years I was practically in charge of and responsible for the details of their litigations; the net profit divided by the two actual members of the firm was about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  The gross was about one hundred and eighty thousand, of which twenty thousand went to defray the regular office expenses—­including rent, stenographers and ordinary law clerks—­while ten thousand was divided among the three men who actually did most of the work.

The first of these was a highly trained lawyer about forty-five years of age, who could handle anything from a dog-license matter before a police justice to the argument of a rebate case in the United States Supreme Court.  He was paid forty-five hundred dollars a year and was glad to get it.  He was the active man of the office.  The second man received thirty-five hundred dollars, and for that sum furnished all the special knowledge needed in drafting railroad mortgages and intricate legal documents of all sorts.  The third was a chap of about thirty who tried the smaller cases and ran the less important corporations.

The two heads of the firm devoted most of their time to mixing with bankers, railroad officials and politicians, and spent comparatively little of it at the office; but they got the business—­somehow.  I suppose they found it because they went out after it.  It was doubtless quite legitimate.  Somebody must track down the game before the hunter can do the shooting.  At any rate they managed to find plenty of it and furnished the work for the other lawyers to do.

I soon made up my mind that in New York brains were a pretty cheap commodity.  I was anxious to get ahead; but there was no opening in the firm and there were others ready to take my place the moment it should become vacant.  I was a pretty fair lawyer and had laid by in the bank nearly a thousand dollars; so I went to the head of the firm and made the proposition that I should work at the office each day until one o’clock and be paid half of what I was then getting—­that is, fifty dollars a month.  In the afternoons an understudy should sit at my desk, while I should be free.

I then suggested that the firm might divide with me the proceeds of any business I should bring in.  My offer was accepted; and the same afternoon I went to the office of a young stockbroker I knew and stayed there until three o’clock.  The next day I did the same thing, and the day after.  I did not buy any stocks, but I made myself agreeable to the group about the ticker and formed the acquaintance of an elderly German, who was in the chewing-gum business and who amused himself playing the market.