HKB
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Armed with these insinuating documents I procured a fresh roll of one hundred one-dollar bills and set forth to interview all whose acquaintance I had made in the course of my brief residence in the city. My argument ran thus: Almost anybody would be willing to receive a dollar every month in return for a service that would cost him nothing. With an outlay of one hundred dollars I could have a hundred persons virtually in my employ trying to get me business. After the first month I could discontinue with those who seemed likely to prove unremunerative. Almost any case would return in fees as much as my original disbursement. On the whole it seemed a pretty safe investment and the formal-looking contract would tend to increase the sense of obligation upon the contracting party of the first part. Nor did my forecast of the probabilities prove at all wide of the mark. Practically every one to whom I put the proposition readily accepted my dollar and signed the agreement, and at the end of a week my one hundred dollars had been distributed among all the cab drivers, conductors, waiters, elevator men, clerks, bartenders, actors, hall boys, and storekeepers that I knew or with whom I could scrape an acquaintance. None of them expected to have any business of their own and all welcomed with delight the idea of profiting by the misfortunes of their friends.
I had often lost or won at a single sitting at cards a much larger sum than the one I was now risking in what seemed an excellent business proposition, so that the money involved caused me no uneasiness. Besides, I had fifty dollars left in my pocket. Meantime I spent my evening in my office reading Blackstone and such text-books as I cared to borrow from the well-equipped library of my employers.
Business came, however, with unexpected promptitude. At the end of the first week I had received calls from two actors who desired to sue their managers for damages for breach of contract, five waiters who wished to bring actions for wages due, and actress who wanted a separation from her husband, a bartender who was charged with assault for knocking the teeth of an unruly customer down his throat, and a boy whose leg had been caught under an elevator and crushed. Each of these I made sign an agreement that I should receive half of any sum recovered in consideration of seeing that they received proper legal advice and service, and each of them I sent over to Counsellor Gottlieb, with whom I executed a mutual contract to divide evenly the fees received.