By Advice of Counsel
"Kotow! Kotow! To the great Yen-How, And wish him the longest of lives! With his one-little, two-little, three-little, four-little, Five-little, six-little wives!"
"The fact is I've been arrested for bigamy," said Mr. Higgleby in a pained and slightly resentful manner. He was an ample flabby person, built like an isosceles triangle with a smallish head for the apex, slightly expanded in the gangliar region just above the nape of the neck--medical students and phrenologists please note--and habitually wearing an expression of helpless pathos. Instinctively you felt that you wanted to do something for Mr. Higgleby--to mother him, maybe.
"Then you should see my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt severely. "He's the matrimonial specialist."
"I want to see Mr. Tutt, the celebrated divorce lawyer," explained Mr. Higgleby.
"You mean my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt. "Willie, show the gentleman in to Mr. Tutt."
"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Higgleby, and followed Willie.
"Is this Mr. Higgleby?" chirped Tutt as Higgleby entered the adjoining office. "Delighted to see you, sir! What can we--I--do for you?"
"The fact is, I've been arrested for bigamy," repeated Mr. Higgleby.
Now the Tutt system--demonstrated effective by years of experience--for putting a client in a properly grateful and hence liberal frame of mind was, like the method of some physicians, first to scare said client, or patient, out of his seven senses; second, to admit reluctantly, upon reflection, that in view of the fact that he had wisely come to Tutt & Tutt there might still be some hope for him; and third, to exculpate him with such a flourish of congratulation upon his escape that he was glad to pay the modest little fee of which he was then and there relieved. Tutt & Tutt had only two classes of clients: those who paid as they came in, and those who paid as they went out.
Therefore upon hearing Mr. Higgleby's announcement as to the nature of his trouble Tutt registered horror.
"What? What did you say?" he demanded.
"I said," repeated Mr. Higgleby with a shade of annoyance, "'the fact is, I've been arrested for bigamy.' I don't see any reason for making such a touse about it," he added plaintively.
"Who's making a--a--a touse about it?" inquired Tutt, perceiving that he had taken the wrong tack. "I'm not. I was just a little surprised at a man of your genteel appearance--"
"Oh, rot!" expostulated Mr. Higgleby weakly. "You're just like all of 'em! I suppose you were going to say I didn't look like a bigamist--and all that. Well, cut it! Let's start fair. I _am_ a bigamist!"
Tutt regarded him with obvious curiosity. "You don't say!" he ejaculated, much as if he wished to add: "How does it feel?"
"I do say!" retorted Mr. Higgleby.
"Well," exclaimed Tutt cheerily, passing into the second phase of the Tutt-Tutt treatment, "after all, bigamy isn't so bad! It's only five years at the worst. Generally it's not more than six months."
"Get wise!" snapped Mr. Higgleby. "I didn't come here to have you throw cold chills into me. I came here to find out how to beat it!"
"Why, certainly! Of course!" protested Tutt hastily.
"I was--"
"And I expect you to get me off!"
"Yes, yes!" murmured Tutt, his usual style completely cramped.
"No matter what!"
"Yes," faintly tuttered Tutt.
"Well," continued Higgleby, taking out a cigar that in shape and looseness of wrapping closely resembled its owner, "now that's settled, let's get down to brass tacks. Here's a copy of the indictment."
He produced a document bearing a large gold seal.
"Those robbers made me pay a dollar-sixty for certification!" he remarked peevishly, indicating the ornament. "What good is certification to me? As if I wanted to pay to make sure I was accused in exact language! Anybody can draw an indictment for bigamy!"
COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF THE PEACE IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK
The People of the State of New York against
THEOPHILUS HIGGLEBY
The Grand Jury of the County of New York, by this indictment, accuse Theophilus Higgleby of the crime of bigamy, committed as follows:
The said Theophilus Higgleby, late of the borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New York, aforesaid, on the eleventh day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at Cook County and the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois, did marry one Tomascene Startup, and her, the said Tomascene Startup, did then and there have for his wife;
And afterward, to wit, on the seventeenth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New York aforesaid, did feloniously marry and take as his wife one Alvina Woodcock, and to the said Alvina Woodcock was then and there married, the said Tomascene Startup being then and there living and in full life, against the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the people of the state of New York and their dignity.
JEREMIAH PECKHAM, District Attorney.
Such was the precise accusation against the isosceles-triangular client, who now sat so limply and disjointedly on the opposite side of Tutt's desk with a certain peculiar air of assurance all his own, as if, though surprised and somewhat annoyed at the grand jury's interference with his private affairs, he was nevertheless--being captain of his own soul--not particularly disturbed about the matter.
"And--er--did you marry these two ladies?" inquired Tutt apologetically.
"Sure!" responded Higgleby without hesitation.
"May I ask why?"
"Why not?" returned Higgleby. "I'm a traveling man."
"Look here," suddenly demanded Tutt. "Were you ever a lawyer?"
"Sure I was!" responded Mr. Higgleby. "I was a member of the bar of Osceola County, Florida."
"You don't say!" gasped Tutt.
"And what, may I ask, are you now?"
"Now I'm a bigamist!" answered Mr. Higgleby.
We forget precisely who it was that so observantly said to another, "Much learning doth make thee mad." At any rate the point to be noted is that overindulgence in erudition has always been known to have an unfortunate effect upon the intellectual faculty. Too much wine--though it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious periods--was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And after all, why should they get paid more than half the wage of plumbers or locomotive firemen? What is easier than sitting before a comfortable steam radiator and reading an etymological dictionary or the Laws of Hammurabi? They toil not even if their heads spin. Only in Germany has the pedagogue ever received full meed of gold and of honor--and look at Germany!
Pedants have never been much considered by men of action. They never will be. Experience is the only teacher, which, in the language of Amos Eno, who left two millions to the Institute of Mechanics and Tradesmen, is "worth a damn." We Americans abhor any affectation of learning; hence our weakness for slang. I should apologize for the word "weakness." On the contrary it is a token of our virile independence, our scorn for the delicatessen of education, mere dilettanteism. And this has its practical side, for if we don't know how to pronounce the words "evanescent persiflage" we can call it "bunk" or "rot." We suspect all college graduates. We don't want them in our business. They slink through our lives like pickpockets fearful of detection.
What has all this to do with anything? It has to do, dear reader, with Mr. Caput Magnus, the assistant of the district attorney of the county of New York, whose duty it was to present the evidence in all criminal cases to the grand jury and make ready the instruments of torture known as bills of indictment for that august body's action thereon.
For by all the lights of the Five Points, Chinatown--Mulberry, Canal, Franklin, Lafayette and Centre streets--Pontin's Restaurant, Moe Levy's One Price Tailoring Establishment, and even by those of the glorious days of Howe & Hummel, by the Nine Gods of Law--and more--Caput Magnus was a learned savant. He and he alone of all the members of the bar on the pay roll of the prosecutor's office, housed in their smoke-hung cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building, knew how to draw up those complicated and awful things with their barbed-wire entanglements of "saids," "then and there beings," "with intents," "dids," "to wits," and "aforesaids" in all the verbal chaos with which the law requires those accused of crime to be "simply, clearly and directly" informed of the nature of the offense charged against them, in order that they may know what to do about it and prepare their defense.