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7
. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4
or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would
prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The
first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an
unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro
orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around
through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro
children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their
litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody--but Orion
still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring
with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The
third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands--about half
an hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it--Bliss paid him $15. Thus four
or five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless
be increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library."
Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that
lair day by day as patiently as a spider.
8
. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as
Mark Twain's Brother"--that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed
lecture, "On the Formation of Character."
"
9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran
a bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It
raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.
508
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