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Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia by William Gilmore Simms
page 78 of 620 (12%)
business was not large, however, and among the arts of his profession,
and as a means for supplying the absence of more legitimate occasions
for its employment, he was reputed as excessively expert in making the
most of any difficulty among his neighbors. The egg of mischief and
controversy was hardly laid, before the worthy lawyer, with maternal
care, came clucking about it; he watched and warmed it without
remission; and when fairly hatched, he took care that the whole brood
should be brought safely into court, his voice, and words, and actions,
fully attesting the deep interest in their fortunes which he had
manifested from the beginning. Many a secret slander, ripening at length
into open warfare, had been traced to his friendly influence, either _ab
ovo_, or at least from the perilous period in such cases when the very
existence of the embryo relies upon the friendly breath, the sustaining
warmth, and the occasional stimulant. Lawyer Pippin, among his
neighbors, was just the man for such achievements, and they gave him,
with a degree of shrewdness common to them as a people, less qualified
credit for the capacity which he at all times exhibited in bringing a
case into, than in carrying it out of court. But this opinion in nowise
affected the lawyer's own estimate of his pretensions. Next to being
excessively mean, he was excessively vain, and so highly did he regard
his own opinions, that he was never content until he heard himself
busily employed in their utterance. An opportunity for a speech, such as
the present, was not suffered to pass without due regard; but as we
propose that he shall exhibit himself in the most happy manner at a
later period in our narrative, we shall abridge, in few, the long string
of queerly-associated words in the form of a speech, which, on assuming
the chair thus assigned him, he poured forth upon the assembly. After a
long prefatory, apologetic, and deprecatory exordium, in which his own
demerits, as is usual with small speakers, were strenuously urged; and
after he had exhausted most of the commonplaces about the purity of the
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