Brief,” said the Doctor, significantly. “Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to intimate that Mr. Whitechoker, a clergyman, would stoop to the writing of such a rhyme as that,” cried the Idiot. “People nowadays seem to me to be utterly[34] lacking in that respect for the cloth to which it is entitled. Mr. Brief, if you really wrote that thing you owe it to Mr. Whitechoker to own up and thus relieve him of the suspicion the Doctor has so unblushingly cast upon him.” [34] “I can prove an alibi,” said the Lawyer. “I could no more turn a rhyme than I could play ‘Parsifal’ on a piano with one finger, and I wouldn’t if I could. I judge, from what I know of the market value of poems these days, that that valentine of the Doctor’s is worth about two dollars. It would take me a century to write it, and inasmuch as my time is worth at least five dollars a year it stands to reason that I would not put in five hundred dollars’ worth of effort on a two-dollar job. So that lets me out. By-the-way, I got one of these trifles myself. Want to hear it?” “I am just crazy to hear it,” said the Idiot. “If any man has reduced you to poetry, Mr. Brief, he’s a great man. With all your many virtues, you seem to me to fit into a poetical theme about as snugly as an[35] automobile with full power on in a china-shop. By all means let us have it.” [35] “This modern St. Valentine of ours has reduced the profession to verse with a nicety that elicits my most profound admiration,” said Mr. Brief. “Just listen to this: “The Lawyer is no wooer, yet To sue us is his whim. The Lawyer is no tailor, but We get our suits from him. The longest things in all the world— They are the Lawyer’s briefs, And all the joys he gets in life
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