ON his twenty-second birthday (August 28, 1771), the day after his arrival at home, Goethe applied to be admitted as one of the advocates of Frankfort. A few days afterwards he took the oath as an advocate and citizen; and he soon received his first case—an extraordinary one, in which he had to defend a son against a father. Judgment was given in favour of Goethe’s client, but both he and the advocate on the other side were rebuked for the bitterness with which they had presented their arguments. In the course of the winter Goethe had only one other case. Law had little interest for him, and he accepted professional work merely to please his father, who was bent on seeing him an eminent pleader.