about Mr. Beasley, he is always humbling himself.”  He says, “Marse Frank, you are right; I don’t know how you is, but I always mistrusts a man that runs hisself down.” [Laughter.] He says, “I don’t know how you is, Marse Frank, but I tell you how it is with me:  this nigger scarcely ever says no harm against hisself.”  So I say it of the legal profession—­this here nigger don’t never scarcely say no harm against himself. [Great laughter.]

Of course we are the best profession in the world, but if any of our clients are standing at that door and listening to this oratory, I know what their reflection is.  They are laughing in their sleeves and saying:  “Watch him, watch him; did you ever hear lawyers talk as much for nothing?  Watch them; it is the funniest scene I ever saw.  There are a lot of lawyers with their hands in their own pockets.” [Laughter.]

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, another thing.  We are not fooling with any judges now.  I know who I am talking to and how long I have been doing it.  Sometimes you can fool a judge into letting you have more time than the rule allows; but with lawyers, enough is enough.  We know exactly when to put on the brakes with each other.  We are not now earning fees by the yard or charging by the minute, and when a man is through with what he has to say, it is time to sit down, and all I have to say in conclusion is, that the more I watch the legal profession and observe it, the more I am convinced that with the great responsibility, with the great trusts confided to it, with the great issues committed to its keeping, with the great power it has to direct public feeling and public sentiment, with the great responsibilities resulting, take it as a mass—­and there are plenty of rascals in it—­but take it as a mass, and measure it up, and God never made a nobler body in these United States. [Applause.]

EDWARD OLIVER WOLCOTT

THE BRIGHT LAND TO WESTWARD

[Speech of Edward O. Wolcott at the eighty-second annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1887.  The President, ex-Judge Horace Russell, introduced the speaker as follows:  “It was an English lawyer who said that the farther he went West the more he was convinced that the wise men came from the East.  We may not be so thoroughly convinced of this after we have heard the response to the next regular toast, ’The Pilgrim in the West.’  I beg to introduce Mr. Edward O. Wolcott, of Colorado.”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—­It was with great diffidence that I accepted the invitation of your President to respond to a toast to-night.  I realized my incapacity to do justice to the occasion, while at the same time I recognized the high compliment conveyed.  I felt somewhat as the man did respecting the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy; he said he didn’t know whether Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s works or not, but if he didn’t, he missed the greatest opportunity of his life. [Laughter.]