I know a considerable number of doctors, as well as lawyers, who have built up lucrative practices by making love to their female clients and patients.  That I never did; but I always made it a point to flatter any women I took in to dinner, and I am now the trustee or business adviser for at least half a dozen wealthy widows as a direct consequence.

One reason for my success is, I discovered very early in the game that no woman believes she really needs a lawyer.  She consults an attorney not for the purpose of getting his advice, but for sympathy and his approval of some course she has already decided on and perhaps already followed.  A lawyer who tells a woman the truth thereby loses a client.  He has only to agree with her and compliment her on her astuteness and sagacity to intrench himself forever in her confidence.

A woman will do what she wants to do—­every time.  She goes to a lawyer to explain why she intends to do it.  She wants to have a man about on whom she can put the blame if necessary, and is willing to pay—­moderately—­for the privilege.  She talks to a lawyer when no one else is willing to listen to her, and thoroughly enjoys herself.  He is the one man who—­unless he is a fool—­cannot talk back.

Another fact to which I attribute a good deal of my professional eclat is, that I never let any of my social friends forget that I was a lawyer as well as a good fellow; and I always threw a hearty bluff at being prosperous, even when a thousand or two was needed to cover the overdraft in my bank account.  It took me about ten years to land myself firmly among the class to which I aspired, and ten years more to make that place impregnable.

To-day we are regarded as one of the older if not one of the old families in New York.  I no longer have to lick anybody’s boots, and until I began to pen these memoirs I had really forgotten that I ever had.  Things come my way now almost of themselves.  All I have to do is to be on hand in my office—­cheerful, hospitable, with a good story or so always on tap.  My junior force does the law work.  Yet I challenge anybody to point out anything dishonorable in those tactics by which I first got my feet on the lower rungs of the ladder of success.

It may perhaps be that I should prefer to write down here the story of how, simply by my assiduity and learning, I acquired such a reputation for a knowledge of the law that I was eagerly sought out by a horde of clamoring clients who forced important litigations on me.  Things do not happen that way in New York to-day.

Should a young man be blamed for getting on by the easiest way he can?  Life is too complex; the population too big.  People have no accurate means of finding out who the really good lawyers or doctors are.  If you tell them you are at the head of your profession they are apt to believe you, particularly if you wear a beard and are surrounded by an atmosphere of solemnity.  Only a man’s intimate circle knows where he is or what he is doing at any particular time.