“What do you think of me, young gentleman?” asked the passenger, as he replaced the pipe in his mouth. “I am a fine-looking man, am I not?”
“Strange!--Ay, I puzzle you, as I have done, and shall do, many. You cannot read me as easily as I can read you. Come, shall I guess at your character and circumstances? You are a gentleman, or something like it, by birth;--that the tone of your voice tells me. You are poor, devilish poor;--that the hole in your coat assures me. You are proud, fiery, discontented, and unhappy;--all that I see in your face. It was because I saw those signs that I spoke to you. I volunteer no acquaintance with the happy.”
“I dare say not; for if you know all the unhappy you must have a sufficiently large acquaintance,” returned Philip.
“Your wit is beyond your years! What is your calling, if the question does not offend you?”
“I have none as yet,” said Philip, with a slight sigh, and a deep blush.
“More’s the pity!” grunted the smoker, with a long emphatic nasal intonation. “I should have judged that you were a raw recruit in the camp of the enemy.”
“In other words, a plant growing out of a lawyer’s desk. I will explain. There is one class of spiders, industrious, hard-working octopedes, who, out of the sweat of their brains (I take it, by the by, that a spider must have a fine craniological development), make their own webs and catch their flies. There is another class of spiders who have no stuff in them wherewith to make webs; they, therefore, wander about, looking out for food provided by the toil of their neighbours. Whenever they come to the web of a smaller spider, whose larder seems well supplied, they rush upon his domain--pursue him to his hole--eat him up if they can--reject him if he is too tough for their maws, and quietly possess themselves of all the legs and wings they find dangling in his meshes: these spiders I call enemies--the world calls them lawyers!”
Philip laughed: “And who are the first class of spiders?”
“Honest creatures who openly confess that they live upon flies. Lawyers fall foul upon them, under pretence of delivering flies from their clutches. They are wonderful blood-suckers, these lawyers, in spite of all their hypocrisy. Ha! ha! ho! ho!”