"Go it, Randel! Now, Custis, he'll put a wick in me and just set me afire. Goy!"

"'It is the curse of lawyers,'" the unrelaxing stranger read, "'to let their judgment for hire, from early manhood, to easy clients, or to suppress it in the cringing necessities of popular politics: hence that residue and fruit of all talents, the honest conviction of a man's bravest sagacity, perishes in lawyers' souls ere half their powers are fledged: they become the registers of other men, they think no more than wax.'"

Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The illustration was cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with another candle.

"There's method in his madness, Custis," he said, with a wink. "Let me introduce my great friend to you, Randel?"

"Stop there," the engineer repeated, sternly, "till I have read my sentence. 'Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful parts, in a community as detached and pastoral as the State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to his manliness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel, Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will probably be built in the State of Delaware during the lifetime of the said Clayton. No fee he can earn in his native state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer there like his who shall be successful with the suit of John Randel, Junior, against the Canal Company. No principle is better worth a great lawyer's vindication than that these corporations, in their infancy, shall not trample upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.'"

"Well said and highly thought," interposed Judge Custis.

"'The said Clayton,'" continued John Randel, still reading, "'refuses the aid of his abilities to a stranger and a gentleman inhospitably treated in the State of Delaware.'"

"No, no," cried Clayton; "that is a charge against me I will not permit."

"'The said Clayton,'" read Randel, inflexibly, "'with the possibilities of light, riches, and honor for himself, and justice for a fellow-man, chooses cowardice, mediocrity - and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes and his.'"

With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his hands and waft of his breath, put out all the candles at once and left the whole room in darkness.

Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordinary illustration:

"Clayton, I believe he has a good case."

"That is not the point now," Mr. Clayton said, with rising spirit and emphasis. "The point now is, 'Am I guilty of inhospitality?' Goy! that touches me as a Delawarean, and is a high offence in this little state. It is true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with an introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Seward, of New York, who vouches for him. But the corporation he menaces is also entitled to hospitality: it is, in the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself, that frugal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own state, and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is it the part of hospitality to be taking advantage of our small interposing geography, and laying by the heels, through our local courts, a young, struggling, and, indeed, national undertaking?"