Chapter 3

"Page 184, m'lud. As I was saying, the Court there held that the right to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away--"

This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively sane.

"It would be odd," he observes, cuttingly, "if any Court _had_ decided a point about mortgages in _Cookson versus Gedge_, because on looking at the page to which you have referred us, find that _Cookson and Gedge_ was _a running-down case_!"

I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of "authorities" I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given ROGERS & Co. my valuable Opinion gratis.

I hear DICK FIBBINS, in this trying position, with the eyes of three Judges fixed on him, swearing at me under his breath in the most awful manner. But why did he depend on _me_? Why didn't he get up the case himself?

Deprived at one blow of most of his precedents, "shorn"--as the Breach of Promise Reports puts it--"of its usual attractions," FIBBINS's speech becomes an impotent affair. He has to quote such cases as he can remember, and as neither his memory nor his legal knowledge is great, he presents them all wrongly, and prematurely sits down. I see PROSER's wrinkled countenance illumined with an exultant smile. Just as I am moving out of Court (FIBBINS has to "move" _in_ Court), because I am desirous of avoiding FIBBINS's wrath,--though I feel that this _fiasco_ is more his fault than mine,--I hear the presiding judge (the mad one) say to the Defendant's Counsel that he need not trouble to address them. I know what _that_ means--judgment for the Defendant!

Chancing half-an-hour later to enter a Strand Restaurant, part of which, I regret to say, is also a drinking-bar, I am startled at beholding the identical form and features of FIBBINS himself. He appears flushed--has two companions with him, to whom he is talking excitedly. I hear the words--"idiot"--"jackass of a pupil"--"regular sell"--and; but no, perhaps I had better not repeat all that I _did_ hear. I decide to seek refreshment elsewhere.

Over the subsequent scene in FIBBINS's Chambers I prefer to draw a veil. It is sufficient to say that I was obliged to leave FIBBINS, and thereafter received a solid half-year's instruction in the Chambers of a learned Counsel who was not a briefless impostor.

I heard afterwards that he had added the story to his fund of legal dining-out anecdotes, and had considerably amplified it. It came out in a shape which made FIBBINS a hero, myself an imbecile of a rather malicious kind, PROSER helplessly cowering under FIBBINS's wealth of arguments, and the other two Judges reduced to admiring silence. I take this opportunity of stating that if anybody "cowered" in Court on that memorable occasion, it was certainly not poor old PROSER.

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THE "DISAPPOINTMENT OF DECEMBER."

["It is too early yet (says the _Telegraph_) to announce the title of the latest of the Laureate's plays, but this much may be said, that it is written partly in blank verse and partly in prose, that it is what is known in theatrical circles as a 'a costume play,' and that the scene is laid in England. It may, however, interest sensitive dramatists to know that Lord TENNYSON is liberal enough to place the stage detail wholly in the competent hands of Mr. DALY. He does not wince if a line is cut here and there, or protest if a scene or a speech has to be supplied."]

Behold, I know not anything,-- Except that if I write two Acts in verse, And two in prose, I might do worse Than having a Four Act song to sing.

I leave the dress we know to-day; On English ground my scene I set, And wonder if I touch as yet, What we have termed a "_Costume Play!_"

If I have over-writ, and laid, It may be here, it may be there, The fat too thickly on,--with care To cut it down be not afraid.

But oh, if here and there I seem To have half-said what I should say, Give me the start--I'll fire away, And keep up the poetic steam--

Ay! keep it up in lines that run As glibly from the Laureate's pen, That I shall by my fellow men Be greeted with "That's TENNYSON!"

In short, it will not be easy, from such scanty information as the Noble Rhymester has as yet given to the public, to say precisely what sort of a play this promised comedy, "half in prose, half in blank verse," will prove itself to be; but it is to be hoped with _The Promise of May_ still fresh in the memory of many a playgoer, that the forthcoming effort may not, after all, turn out to merit the unpromising title of _The Disappointment of December_.

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A MYSTERIOUSLY MASONIC LINE.--"Oh, for a Lodge in some vast wilderness!"

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