Powers of Attorney Read Online Free PDF

one’s family? But it was difficult for most people, particularly people who had spent so much of their lives “waiting for Godot,” to understand this. They clung to other values which, perfectly obviously, failed to make them happy. One had only to look about at Leila’s old friends. And it was because the Barry Schlides, by talking and carrying on the way Leila had been erroneously led to believe that downtown people talked and carried on, confirmed her in her prejudice that Jake found them so objectionable.
    Originally, he had regarded Barry as a mere clown. That round, red, rubbery beaming face, topped by the balding dome over which the sparse long hairs were so carefully pasted back, looming up in the center of groups at cocktails to proclaim in a high shrill voice the Schlide victories over Uncle Sam in the Court of Claims or the Tax Court, had seemed to Jake simply ridiculous. Yet he had learned that there was something about Barry, despite his outrageous conceit and his blatant toadying, despite his never-ending loquacity and his abominable jokes, that made the other clerks put up with him, at times even like him. There was an infectious quality in the intimacy that he thrust upon one, in his unfailing good humor, even in his bland assumption that one was in the identical craft with himself. And then, too, he was certainly a good tax lawyer.
    But a partner? Did Margy Schlide who, after all, was nobody’s fool, seriously believe that Barry was going to be a partner? Jake thought of himself as an expert in such matters, keeping a secret file in his desk that listed all the members of the firm since 1925, with statistics of their states of origin, law schools, legal specialties, religions, social backgrounds and whether or not they were possessed of independent means. He could think of no precedent in his file to encourage the Schlides.
    â€œHorace,” he asked his office mate the following Monday morning, “have you ever stopped to consider Barry Schlide’s future in the firm?”
    Their desks faced opposite walls, but the slap of Horace’s tilted chair against the floor was ample statement of his interest. Horace Mason was a stout, bald, didactic young man, the office politician, but the general assumption that he was apprenticed to Tower, Tilney only until he had reached an age to take up a partnership in his father’s firm, Mason, Winthrop & Sears, gave to his opinions a detachment that made him the associates’ oracle.
    â€œFunny you should say that. I was just thinking of Barry. He wanted to know if my old man would put him up for the Midday Club. Imagine! When he’s never even met him. But I wonder if Barry’s very lack of guile might not turn out to be his strongest asset.”
    â€œHe’s so
different.”
    â€œAh, but that’s just it, Jake, old man. That’s what you don’t see with all your graphs and charts. We live in an age where it’s the fashion to break precedents.”
    â€œWhat do you know about my charts?” Jake demanded heatedly. “Have you been looking in my desk?”
    â€œOf course I have,” Horace retorted calmly. “As you’ve been looking in mine. But that’s aside from the point. The point is that this firm is properly concerned with its reputation of being a bit on the social side. Having Barry as a partner might balance things out.”
    Jake turned morosely back to his work, remembering Horace’s earlier prediction that the firm would make only one partner that year. And who had earned it more than Jake Platt? Who was more qualified by his industry, his tenure in office, his undisputed position as Clitus Tilney’s “fair-haired boy,” by the fact that he had never made an enemy, that he was as popular with the office boys as with the partners, that he was handsome Jake, serious Jake, smiling Jake, a fixture in Tower, Tilney who never blinked if asked to work around