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THE GREEN BAG
LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE LEGAL PROFESSION. PROPRIETY. BY STANLEY E. BOWDLE PROPRIETY is a great matter. It is the difference often between success and failure. Knowledge is a great matter; but unless knowledge espouses itself to the proprieties, and trims its nails, and keeps its clothes brushed, it limps hamstrung through life. When Adolph Thiers, the young man with buff breeches — that Thiers who afterwards slept in the bed of Louis the i6th, as Presi dent of France — went up to Paris to matriculate at the Law School of the great university, he was rejected. This was be cause, unknown to poor Adolph, there was a rule of that famous school, that no young man could matriculate in the law depart ment, unless he could first prove that he had sufficient income to maintain himself with dignity, whether practice came or not. Now Adolph had nothing but the buff breeches that mother made, and hence was disqualified from studying that exalted science that has brought this world to its present stage of honesty, happiness, and gen eral prosperity. (Adolph afterwards secured the price.) But the point to all this is, that the regents of that university understood the proprieties and were determined to prevent conditions coming about that might compel lawyers to violate them. The French code of legal proprieties did not contemplate a lawyer eating one franc lunches at Paris hash houses, or riding leg to leg in public trams, or occupying gallery seats at grand opera. It contemplated him as a gentleman, with all the visible aristocracy that clothes, and dignified riding, and decorous dining can give; and hence it was that young Adolph 's purse rather than his head, was first exam ined. With their wealth of sentiment, still how practical are the French!
Of course, we Americans must sneer at this — we simply must. Though we know that we measure everything by money, and clothes, and dining, we simply must sneer at this. Every canon of our traditions com pels it. So, having all sneered, let's pass on. All the same, propriety is a great matter, greater than any of us suspect. He is the universal Caesar whose tribute money we and our fathers have paid so long that we have forgotten to examine the kingly image and superscription on his lordly coin; and we contribute to the fatness of his purse coffers more promptly to-day than ever. So great is my own respect for the pro prieties, that I have always felt that a chair should be devoted to that subject by our law schools. While it will be some years before we shall demand an inspection of the young student's purse, we should be able now to show him that, as a lawyer, a whiskbroom will be more useful than a knowledge of what constitutes agency; and that, how ever important it may be for him to under stand the law of Combinations in Trade, it is of more importance to know that the tooth-brush should not be carried in the vest pocket, and that knee sprung trousers are sufficient to render unmarketable a knowledge of the law of trusts for spend thrifts. But this trite truth few lawyers compre hend, with the result that much legal genius sits mummified in its box stall office in the shiny cerements of death, and power, ready to effervesce, ambles uncorked about our courts. Clothes are important to the lawyer — oh, yes! The learned occupant of that chair might devote several lectures to clothes. They are often the only thing that "severs
