Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/551

457 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 457

case that was ever brou<^ht forward. Whatever they do, there they sit from the first moment to the last. When it is heavy rainy weather, they all come in wet through ; and at such times the vapours of the Court are like those of a fungus-pit.

A casual visitor might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness. There is not a messenger or process-server attached to it, who wears a coat that was made for him ; not a tolerably fresh, or wholesome-looking man in the whole establishment, except a little white-headed apple-faced tipstaff, and even he, like an ill-con- ditioned cherry preserved in brandy, seems to have artificially dried and withered up into a state of preservation, to which he can lay no natural claim. The very barristers' wigs are ill-powdered, and their curls lack crispness.

But the attorneys, who sit at a large bare table below the Commis- sioners, are, after all, the greatest curiosities. The professional establish- ment of the more opulent of these gentlemen, consists of a blue bag and a boy : generally a youth of the Jewish persuasion. They have no fixed oflSces, their legal business being transacted in the parlours of public houses, or the yards of prisons, whither they repair in crowds, and canvass for customers after the manner of omnibus cads. They are of a greasy and mildewed appearance ; and if they can be said to have any vices at all, perhaps drinking and cheating are the most conspicuous among them. Their residences are usually on the outskirts of " the Rules," chiefly lyin^ within a circle of one mile from the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Their looks are not prepossessing, and their manners are peculiar.

Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body, was a fat flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same cameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature ; so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament it made up in usefulness.

"I'm sure to bring him through it," said Mr. Pell.

" Are you though ? " replied the person to whom the assurance was pledged.

" Certain sure," replied Pell ; " but if he'd gone to any irregular practitioner, mind you, I wouldn't have answered for the consequences."


 * Ahl " said the other, with open mouth.

" No, that I wouldn't," said Mr. Pell ; and he pursed up his lips, frowned, and shook his head mysteriously.

Now the place where this discourse occurred, was the public-house just opposite to the Insolvent Court ; and the person with whom it was held was no other than the elder Mr. Weller, who had come there to comfort and console a friend, whose petition to be discharged under the act was to he that day heard, and whose attorney he was at that moment consulting.

" And vere is George?" inquired the old gentleman.