bottom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door
opening from one to another. These doors could also be closed.

"Ships," Lawyer Gooch would say, "are constructed for safety, with
separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one
compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes
on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would
sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with
clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the
assistance of Archibald--an office boy with a future--I cause the
dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I
sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If necessary, they
may be baled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the
stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of
business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were
allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped--ha, ha, ha!"

The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted
Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and
the prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good
property of humour.

Lawyer Gooch's practice leaned largely to the settlement of marital
infelicities. Did matrimony languish through complications, he
mediated, soothed and arbitrated. Did it suffer from implications,
he readjusted, defended and championed. Did it arrive at the
extremity of duplications, he always got light sentences for his
clients.

But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed, wily belligerent,