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any good?” Joe’s brother Howard asked the debate coach, seated next to him at a football game.
    “He’s pretty fluent now,” Razzoli said to the chatty younger McCarthy, convivial like all the McCarthys, except for father
     Tim. “But there’s a monotone problem. Your brother speaks almost always in the same tone of voice.”
    “What can you do about that?”
    The coach jolted up on his feet to cheer a touchdown. And then replied, “Joe’s quick to learn. He’s no orator. But anyway,
     who really cares?”
    Joe cared. He cared a great deal. As a freshman he had registered as a prospective engineer. By the end of his second year
     he had decided that the law was better suited for him: Now he imagined a lifetime of oral arguments and pleadings before juries
     and judges.
    He’d be good at it, he knew. He was persuasive, and everybody liked him. Soon he was a member of the Franklin Debating Club,
     debating every week. In his final year at law school, five years after his matriculation under the amalgamated curriculum,
     he resolved to run for president of the Franklin club. This proved painful when, at lunch in the cafeteria with his closest
     friend, Charlie Curran, he learned that Curran had already filed for the same post. They agreed, in high bonhomie, to vote
     for each other. The vote was a tie. A fresh vote was scheduled, which Joe won by two votes.
    “Did you vote for me?” Charles Curran asked, a severe expression on his face.
    Joe smiled impishly. “We were told to vote for the best man, weren’t we, Charlie? Well, I did.”

    The big moment loomed: graduation from law school in exactly one month. Charlie Curran had ruminated with Joe. Most of their
     classmates planned to take a week’s vacation, perhaps even two, then they would line up and try to endear themselves to law
     firms in Milwaukee and about. “Not me,” said Charlie. “I’m going to open my own office.”
    Joe looked surprised. He would play that game with Charlie. He said he thought it rather presumptuous to do any such thing.
     Charlie liked that. “Some people are more enterprising than other people, Joe. Never mind; after you hustle for a year or
     two, come on over to where I’m practicing, and I’ll see if I can make room for you.”
    McCarthy waited until the morning of the graduation on Saturday. Walking down the aisle dressed in academic gown and hat,
     keeping rough time with the ceremonial organ music, Joe leaned over: “I bet I’ll have my own office before you do.”
    Charlie managed a disdainful smile. “You’ll have to open your office before Monday. That’s when I’ll hang out my shingle.”
    Joe feigned distress at such a challenge. Then he spoke, quietly, because they were now nearing the stage where the fifty-seven
     law students would sit for the commencement ceremonies before going to Madison to be sworn in at noon. “I bet you twenty bucks
     I’m in business before you are.”
    Late in the afternoon, McCarthy—Bid at his side with her Brownie camera to record the great moment—opened his office, a single
     room shared with Mike Eberlein, an older friend who was himself excited at going out more or less on his own. Bid could not
     disguise her elation: two sons dropped out of high school, one son—a lawyer! She went to St. Ambrose church when dark came
     and prayed out her gratitude for Joe Raymond McCarthy.
    His work was routine. There were a lot of title examinations, local people selling their houses and farms, others picking
     them up. Joe encouraged all his friends to make out their wills if they hadn’t already done so, and to revise their wills
     if they had—if they preferred to pay him only upon death, he would arrange that. He wrote a lot of wills. He wondered about
     the first client who asked for help in obtaining a divorce—Bid wouldn’t like that—but, well, money was scarce, and he couldn’t
     turn down business. He lent himselfardently to the enterprise and even performed as a