“I haven’t got to work yet,” answered Peter

“Looking for a place” was the mental comment of all, for they could not conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage.  So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves.  When time had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods clerks) their respect for him considerably increased.  He could not, however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them.  After the manly high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked them to his.  Peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found reading or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way of passing his evenings.

The morning after this first day in New York, Peter called on his friend, the civil engineer, to consult him about an office; for Watts had been rather hazy in regard to where he might best locate that.  Mr. Converse shook his head when Peter outlined his plan.

“Do you know any New York people,” he asked, “who will be likely to give you cases?”

“No,” said Peter.

“Then it’s absolutely foolish of you to begin that way,” said Mr. Converse.  “Get into a lawyer’s office, and make friends first before you think of starting by yourself.  You’ll otherwise never get a client.”

Peter shook his head.  “I’ve thought it out,” he added, as if that settled it.

Mr. Converse looked at him, and, really liking the fellow, was about to explain the real facts to him, when a client came in.  So he only said, “If that’s so, go ahead.  Locate on Broadway, anywhere between the Battery and Canal Street.”  Later in the day, when he had time, he shook his head, and said, “Poor devil!  Like all the rest.”

Anywhere between the Battery and Canal Street represented a fairly large range of territory, but Peter went at the matter directly, and for the next three days passed his time climbing stairs, and inspecting rooms and dark cells.  At the end of that time he took a moderate-sized office, far back in a building near Worth Street.  Another day saw it fitted with a desk, two chairs (for Peter as yet dreamed only of single clients) and a shelf containing the few law books that were the monuments of his Harvard law course, and his summer reading.  On the following Monday, when Peter faced his office door he felt a glow of satisfaction at seeing in very black letters on the very newly scrubbed glass the sign of: 

    Peter stirling

    Attorney and counsellor-at-law.