About three months afterward he came out to report progress. He had moved along so briskly, from sweeper-out, up through the several grades, that he was now on the editorial staff, and was very happy, particularly as staff work allowed him a good deal of off time for the study of the law, and the law was where his high ambition lay.
I come back now to that Fiske lawsuit. We had gone to Elmira one summer to spend the summer, as usual, at Quarry Farm, and we were visiting Mrs. Clemens’s family down in the town for a while. A young man called and said he would like to see me. I went to the library and saw him there. It was the young man of whom I have been talking, but as I had not seen him for three or four years I did not at first recall him. He said that while he was on the Courant he saved all the money he could, and studied the law diligently in his off hours—that now, recently, he had given up journalism and was going to make a break into the law; that he had canvassed the field and had decided that he would become office assistant to David B. Hill of Elmira, New York—that is to say, he had decided to do this, evidently without requiring Mr. Hill to state whether he wanted it so or not. Hill was a very distinguished lawyer and a big politician, a man of vast importance and influence—and he is still that today, in his old age. The application was made and Hill said promptly that he didn’t need anybody’s assistance. But young Bacon said he didn’t want any pay, he only wanted a chance to work; he could support himself. He would do anything that could be of any assistance to Mr. Hill, even to sweeping out the office; that he wanted to work, and he wanted to be near a man like Hill because he was determined to become a lawyer. Well, as he was not expensive and showed a determination that pleased Hill, Hill gave him office room. Very well, the usual thing happened, the thing that always happens. Little by little Bacon got to beguiling out of Hill things to do, and presently Hill was furnishing him the things to do without any beguilement.
“Now then,” Bacon said, “Mr. Clemens, I’ve got a chance—I’ve got a chance.” Professor Willard Fiske brought his case to Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill examined it carefully and declined to take it. He said Fiske had no case, and therefore he did not wish to take it merely to lose it. Fiske insisted, and presently Hill said: “Well, here’s this young fellow here in my office. If he wants to take your case, all right; I will advise him and help him to the best of my ability without charge”; and he asked if Fiske was willing to put the case into Bacon’s hands. Fiske did it.
Then young Bacon had this happy idea. There being nothing for Fiske in the apparent conditions, he went to the university charter to see what he might find there. He found a very pleasant thing there; to use a phrase of the day, he struck oil in that charter. He brought the charter to Mr. Hill and showed him this large fact: that Cornell University was not privileged to accept or to acquire any property if, at the time, it already possessed property worth three millions of dollars. Cornell University possessed property worth more than that at the time that Mrs. Fiske made her will, and it still possessed that amount.
Hill said, “Well, Bacon, the case is yours—that is to say, well, Bacon, the case is Fiske’s. It is the university, now, that has no show.”
Bacon won the case. It was his first case. He charged Fiske a hundred thousand dollars for his services. Fiske handed him the check, and his thanks therewith.
I didn’t see Bacon again for some years—I don’t know how many—and then he told me that that first lawsuit of his was also his last one; that that first fee of his was the only one he had ever received; that he had hardly pocketed his check until he ran across a most charming young widow possessed of a great fortune and he took them both in. I think I will say nothing more about my great scheme for providing jobs for the unemployed. I think I have proven that it is a good and effective scheme.
Wednesday, April 11, 1906
Mr. Frank Fuller and his enthusiastic launching of Mr. Clemens’s first New York lecture—Results not in fortune, but in fame—Leads to a lecture tour under direction of Redpath—Clipping in regard to Frank Fuller, and Mr. Clemens’s comments.
I am not glancing through my books to find out what I have said in them. I refrain from glancing through those books for two reasons: first—and this reason always comes first in every matter connected with my life—laziness. I am too lazy to examine the books. The other reason is—well, let it go. I had another reason, but it had slipped out of my mind while I was arranging the first one. I think it likely that in the book called Roughing It I have mentioned Frank Fuller. But I don’t know, and it isn’t any matter.
When Orion and I crossed the continent in the overland stagecoach in the summer of 1861, we stopped two or three days in Great Salt Lake City. I do not remember who the Governor of Utah Territory was at that time, but I remember that he was absent—which is a common habit of territorial Governors, who are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in
