CHAPTER I In .
Michaelmas term lately over , and the sitting in .
Implacable November weather .
As much mud in as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of , and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus , forty feet long or so , waddling like an elephantine lizard up .
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots , making a soft black drizzle , with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes -- gone into mourning , one might imagine , for the death of the sun .
Dogs , undistinguishable in mire .
Horses , scarcely better ; splashed to their very blinkers .
, jostling one another 's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper , and losing foot-hold at .
Fog everywhere .
Fog ; fog .
Fog on the , fog on .
Fog creeping into the cabooses of ; fog lying out on and hovering in the rigging of ; fog drooping on the gunwales of and .
Fog in the eyes and throats of , wheezing by the firesides of ; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of , down in ; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of on deck .
Chance peeping over into a nether sky of fog , with fog all round , as if were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds .
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in , much as the sun may , from , be seen to loom by and .
Most of lighted two hours before time -- as the gas seems to know , for it has a haggard and unwilling look .
The raw afternoon is rawest , and the dense fog is densest , and are muddiest near , appropriate ornament for , .
And hard by , in , at the very heart of the fog , sits the in .
Never can there come fog too thick , never can there come mud and mire too deep , to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this , most pestilent of , holds this day in the sight of and .
On such an afternoon , if ever , ought to be sitting here -- as here is -- with a foggy glory round head , softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains , addressed by , and outwardly directing contemplation to the lantern in the roof , where can see nothing but fog .
On such an afternoon ought to be -- as here are -- mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause , tripping one another up on slippery precedents , groping knee-deep in technicalities , running goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces , as might .
On such an afternoon , have inherited it from , who made a fortune by it , ought to be -- as are not ?
-- ranged in a line , in a long matted well ( but might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it ) between 's red table and the silk gowns , with bills , cross-bills , answers , rejoinders , injunctions , affidavits , issues , references to , ' reports , mountains of costly nonsense , piled before .
Well may be dim , with wasting candles here and there ; well may the fog hang heavy in , as if it would never get out ; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into ; well may , who peep in through the glass panes in the door , be deterred from entrance by owlish aspect and by the drawl , languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank !
This is "
Who happen to be in this murky afternoon besides , , , and before mentioned ?
There is , in wig and gown ; and there are , or , or , or whatever may be , in legal court suits .
These are all yawning , for no crumb of amusement ever falls from and ( the cause in hand ) , which was squeezed dry years upon years ago .
, , and invariably decamp with when and comes on .
places are a blank .
Standing on a seat at , the better to peer into , is who is always in , from sitting to rising , and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in favour .
say really is , or was , , but knows for certain because cares .
carries some small litter in a reticule which calls documents , principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender .
has come up , in custody , for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application " to purge of contempt , " which , being who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended that had ever any knowledge , is not at all likely ever to do .
In the meantime prospects in life are ended .
, who periodically appears from and breaks out into efforts to address at the close of the day 's business and who can by no means be made to understand that is legally ignorant of existence after making it desolate for a quarter of a century , plants in a good place and keeps an eye on , ready to call out " Lord ! "
in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of rising .
and linger on the chance of furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal weather a little .
and drones on .
This scarecrow of a suit has , in course of time , become so complicated that knows what it means .
understand it least , but it has been observed that can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises .
have been born into the cause ; have married into it ; have died out of it .
have deliriously found made parties in and without knowing how or why ; have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit .
or has grown up , possessed of a real horse , and trotted away into .
have faded into and ; a long procession of has come in and gone out ; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality ; there are not left upon perhaps since in despair blew brains out at in ; but and still drags its dreary length before , perennially hopeless .
and has passed into a joke .
That is the only good that has ever come of it .
It has been death to many , but it is a joke in the profession .
has had a reference out of it .
was " in it , " for or other , when was at the bar .
Good things have been said about it by in select port-wine committee after dinner in .
have been in the habit of fleshing legal wit upon it .
handled it neatly , when , correcting , , observed , " or when get through and , " -- a pleasantry that particularly tickled , , and .
How many out of the suit and has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question .
From upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in and have grimly writhed into many shapes , down to in who has copied tens of thousands of folio-pages under that eternal heading , 's nature has been made better by it .
In trickery , evasion , procrastination , spoliation , botheration , under false pretences of all sorts , there are influences that can never come to good .
who have kept at bay , by protesting time out of mind that , , or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner , may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into out of and .
has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of and a contempt for own kind .
, , and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising that will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for -- who was not well used -- when and shall be got out of .
Shirking and sharking in all many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause ; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take own bad course , and a loose belief that if go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right .