Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/160

154 I can manage a lawsuit as well as another." "I don't deny what you say," replied Mrs. Bull, "nor do I call in question your parts; but, I say, it does not suit with your circumstances: you and your predecessors have lived in good reputation among your neighbours by this same clothing-trade, and it were madness to leave it off. Besides, there are few that know all the tricks and cheats of these lawyers: does not your own experience teach you, how they have drawn you on from one term to another, and how you have danced the round of all the courts, still flattering you with a final issue, and, for aught I can see, your cause is not a bit clearer than it was seven years ago." "I will be damn'd," says John, "if I accept of any composition from Strutt or his grandfather; I'll rather wheel about the streets an engine to grind knives and scissars; however, I'll take your advice, and look over my accompts."

HEN John first brought out the bills, the surprise of all the family was unexpressible at the prodigious dimensions of them; they would have measured with the best bale of cloth in John's shop. Fees to judges, puisne judges, clerks, prothonotaries, filacers, chirographers, under-clerks, proclamators, council, witnesses, jurymen, marshals, tipstaffs, criers, porters;