I’m growing old, yet not so old but that I well recall the time,   When all the world seemed free from care and all the law seemed writ in rhyme. Add twenty years to what you have—I think you average near that score—   And you’ll begin to ask yourselves, “How many more, how many more?” The span of life is short at best. Mine covers some more than a third   Of all the years that have elapsed since Washington licked George the Third. When I began to practice law on Wall Street, number sixty-two,   We warmed our rooms with open fires and gas was all the light we knew. We had no telephones to jar our thoughts or to conserve our steps,   We copied letters in a book; with letter press we were adepts. One building rose ten stories high, the rest were eight or six or five;   In later years one rose to twelve—I thought I’d not come down alive. Of course no subways drilled the earth; the horse cars ran on old Broadway;   And yet life seemed the same to me as it appears to you to-day. We wrote our deeds and mortgages, complaints and orders, bonds and wills,   And sometimes ruled them, this is true, with pens made out of goose’s quills. We never filed our papers flat; they all were folded quarter shape,   And then the bundles, flanked with boards, were tied together with red tape. The Constitution still was there; the Civil War had scarred it some,   But nothing like this modern bunk had really put it on the bum. The Congress was a harmless bunch; it was far off and no one cared;   It grafted in a quiet way, but didn’t keep the country scared. The States sailed on in sovereign might, their local pride was bold and high,   And no one told a living man they’d tax him if he dared to die. A man could keep all that he earned or got by will or deed of trust;   No bureaucratic grafting pup said don’t do this and that you must. The bankrupt law had been repealed; attachment and assignment laws   We used to force our clients’ rights and give the other fellow pause. We searched our titles from the books; prepared our abstracts and our chains,   And learned by hard experience the blessed worth of taking pains. Forgive this reminiscent stuff, because somehow I like to think   Of roaring nineties’ golden years when honest men could sell a drink. I don’t believe an equal time, from all one reads and sees and hears,   Has ever seen such startling change as in the past—say—forty years. And yet I feel I’ve but begun to get the best there is in life;   The next ten years should bring to me a slackening of this legal strife. This world will run on just the same; someone will always pick the fruits;   And men are watching all the time to find the promising recruits. And they are those who hoe their row with patience and with honest work;   They’re never found among the crowd who growl or whine or slight or shirk. To you, our dear “Associates,” we send a world of hearty thanks,   ’Tis you who in the years to come must fill our future thinning ranks. And may you always have in mind, at every time, in every place,   That you are those who hold in trust the honored name of W & C J.D.W.