Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1893 — Free Law. [ARTICLE]

Free Law.

“One of the small bugbears of a lawyer’s life,” said ono of them recently, a lawyer, not a bugbear, that is, “is the ‘friend’ who pumps him for legal points, usually getting them without the lormality of a fee. “ is nothing easier than to drop in to the office after business hours for a social chat, hand out a cigar, and in the relaxation that follows turn the talk to some apparently hypothetical question of law; then, when the floodgates of legal lore are open, to absorb the information and thus save good dollars at the expense of a cigar or two. This, of course, only happens between men when there is an acquaintance between them. “ I have been amused, however, to notice how some women contrive to get free points on law. “In the public law libraries, for instance, that uro occupied every day by lawyers, such a scene as this is by no means uncommon. The big door will swing around in a slow, uncertain way, and a woman makes her appearance. Sho approaches the bright young man at the desk, and timidly asks him if he knows where she can find out about the law on some stated point. “ ‘lt’s such a small matter,’ she explains, ‘I didn’t want to go to a lawyer.’ “The young man usually knows a good deal of law himself and frequcntly'gets her the U>jk, points out the passage, and let’s her re .d it at her leisure. If, however, it is beyond his knowledge of law, he inquires about it from some one of the good-natured lawyers in the room. Two or three of them will usually listen to the woman’s explanation, and the opinion she gets is the combined wisdom and judgment of all of them. “The woman is very grateful, and profusely thanks every one within hearing distance before she slips out rather more self-possessed than when she came in. “Nobody, I’m sure, begrudges her the information he has given ner r but I often fancy her brandishing ‘advice of counsel’ over somebody’s head, and, having found out what are her legal rights, bolding to them grimly-”—[New York Times.

Recent experience would seem to indicate that it is only a matter of time when natural gas must cease to be used as a manufacturing fuel. Wherever great demands have been made upon the supply, both in Pensylvania and Ohio, the result has been the gradual diminishing of the flow. It is true that new wells continue to bo found, while the old ones do not fail altogether, but keep on producing at a greatly reduced pressure. Scientists have predicted from the first that the natural gas supply would finally give out.—[Philadelphia Coll.