It sometimes becomes necessary for an attorney to assert his rights and privileges to the judge himself.  Do not shrink from it.  It is your duty to your client, your profession, and the cause of justice.  Never cringe to a court.  Never cringe to any one.  He will despise you for it, and properly so.  Remember the dignity of your profession.  Erskine, in his first case, rebuked a prejudiced and perhaps an unjust judge with such vigor that England rang with it.

Cultivate lucidity of style.  You will do that at some risk at first.  When a young lawyer is extremely clear, he is apt to be regarded as not deep.  Abstruseness in expression is very frequently regarded as an indication of profundity.  Nevertheless, persist in a clear and simple style.  Make the statement of your case and the argument in support of your propositions so lucid and plain that the judge or jury will say:  “Why, of course, that is so.  What is the use of the young man stating that?”

The study of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches will be very helpful.  Two or three of Roscoe Conkling’s arguments after he left the Senate are models of perspicuity.  Mr. Potter’s argument in the legal tender cases is a model—­it is Euclid stated in terms of the law.  Webster’s arguments you will study, of course.  Blackstone is one of the clearest writers who ever illustrated the great science to which you and I are devoted.  Perhaps as great a logician as ever lived was the Apostle Paul; read him as a master of logical utterance.

Never be ponderous; never be florid.  At the same time, never be dry.  Be clear; be pointed; be luminous.  I remember having heard both sides of a case argued before an eminent Federal Judge.  One of the lawyers made a long, turgid, “profound”—­and musty—­argument; proceeding like a draft-horse from mile-post to mile-post, until the alert mind of the judge was almost frantic with impatience.

The lawyer on the other side is one of the most eminent members of our profession.  He is as lithe as a panther, physically and mentally, sharp as a serpent’s tooth, as lucid as the atmosphere on a cloudless day, and yet as suggestive as a hickory-wood fire in the old home fireplace on a wintry night.  He paced the floor in impatience while Mr. Turgidity blew the clouds of dust from precedent after precedent.

When it came his time to reply, he did so with a clearness and wealth of expression, an appropriateness of illustration, and a simplicity of reasoning that made one feel that the other man had committed an impertinence in presenting his side at all.  Of course he won his case.

Respect yourself.  A man may lose his money, his reputation—­may even lose everything; and yet he has not lost everything if he retains his self-respect.  Be a gentleman at the outset of your career and forever.  Do not move among men like a beggar for favors.  Do not wear poor clothes.  Apparel yourself like a gentleman.

No client worth having respects you for advertising your poverty.  Do not fear that your community will not know that you are poor.  They know it, and sympathize with you.  But every one of our race likes to see a man “game.”  Therefore, dress well.  Bear yourself like a man who has prosperous potentialities if not prosperous assets.