I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young
fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]--though that was not his
name--and this was to be our first case. We were opposed by Charles J.
Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was
puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of
prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to
dismiss it. The judge refused the motion, and for so doing--as he
afterward told me himself--he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose
presence in the court had puzzled me. After a three weeks' trial, in
which we worked night and day for the plaintiff--with X-ray photographs
and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the
medical school where I prepared them--the jury stood eleven to one in
our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again. The second
time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we
did not give up. It had been all fun for us--and for the town. The
word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting
the corporation heavyweights. It's more fun than a circus.
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