Round the Block | Page 4

And when his half-sister Philomela--who had no
hypocritical concealment about her, thank heaven! and always told
people what she thought of them--pronounced the first of those luxuries
"trash," the second "disgusting," and the other two "idiotic," he met her
candid criticisms with a pleasant laugh, and said that, at any rate, they
hurt nobody but himself.
To which Philomela invariably retorted: "But suppose every strapping
fellow, at your time of life, should take to novel-reading, and such
fooleries, what would become of the world, I would like to know?"
And her brother, puffing out a long stream of smoke, would respond:
"Suppose, my dear sister, every woman was destined to be an old maid,
as you are, what would become of the world, I would like to know?"
The conversation always terminated at this point, by Philomela
declaring that coarse personality was the refuge of weak-minded people
when they could not answer arguments, and that, for her part, she
would never take the trouble to say another plain, straightforward word
for his good; whereupon there would be a truce, lasting sometimes a
whole day.
Fayette Overtop, the second of the three young men--the one looking
out of the window, drumming idly on the glass, and continually tossing
back his head to clear the long black hair from his brow, over which it

hung in an incurable cowlick--was a short, compact, nervous person,
twenty-five years old. Mr. Overtop had been educated for the law, but,
finding the profession uncomfortably crowded when he came into it,
had not yet achieved those brilliant triumphs which he once fondly
imagined within his reach. For three years he had been in regular
attendance at his office from nine A.M. to three P.M. (as per written
card on the door), except in term time, when he was a patient frequenter
of the courts. During these three years he had picked up something less
than enough to pay his half of the rent of two small, dimly lighted, but
expensive rooms on the fourth floor of a labyrinth in the lower part of
the city.
Mr. Overtop, when asked to explain this state of things, about which he
made no concealment, always attributed it to a "lack of clients."
If he had clients enough, and of the right kind, he felt confident that he
could make a figure in the profession. Having few clients, and those in
insignificant cases only, of course he had no opportunities for
distinction. He could not stand in the street and beg for clients, or drag
men forcibly into his chambers and compel them to be clients; and he
would not degrade the dignity of his calling by advertising for clients,
or taking any means whatever to get them, except by establishing a
reputation for professional learning and integrity. The only inducement
which he ever put in the way of clients, was a series of signs, outside
the street door, on the first flight of stairs, at the head of the first
landing, on the second flight of stairs, at the head of the second landing,
and so on to the fourth floor, where the firm name of "Overtop &
Maltboy" confronted the panting climber for the eighth and last time,
painted in large gold letters on black tin, nailed to the office door.
Mr. Overtop was willing to give clients every facility for finding him,
when they had once started at the bottom of the building; and would, as
it were, lead them gently on, by successive signs; but good luck and a
good name, slowly but surely acquired, must do the rest.
A snug property, of which Mr. Overtop spent less than the income,
fortunately enabled him to indulge in these novel views, and to regard
clients, much as they were desired, as by no means indispensable to his

existence. In his unprofessional hours, Mr. Overtop was everything but
a lawyer. He was chiefly a philosopher, a discoverer, a searcher after
truth, a turner-up of undeveloped beauties in every-day things, which,
he said, were rich in instruction when intelligently examined. He could
trace out lines of beauty in a gridiron, and detect the subtle charm that
lurks in the bootjack.
As not unfrequently happens, in partnerships of business and of other
descriptions, Matthew Maltboy--the young man standing before the
blazing coal fire, and critically surveying his own person--was quite the
opposite of Fayette Overtop. Maltboy was fat and calm. Portraits were
in existence showing Maltboy as a young lad in a jacket and turn-down
collar, having a slim, graceful figure, a delicate face, and a sad but
interesting promise of early decay upon him. Other portraits, of the
same original, taken at later periods of the photographic art, represented
a gradual squaring out of the shoulders, a progressive puffiness in the
cheeks,