Punch: Punch (101.1891)

180 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [Ociobeb 10, 1891.

JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE.

Tenth En thy.

Dick Fibbins, my more or less "learned" instructor in practical
law, goes out to a good many evening parties, I rind. Casually
remarks that he " danced three square dances, the other night, with
old Davis's ugly daughter, the Solor (legal slang for Solicitor), in
Caraway Street." It's Davis himself, not the daughter, that is the
Solicitor, and, it seems she introduced the gay Fibbins to her Papa.
Hence another brief, a rather complicated one, on some dispute about
a mortgage.

On the morning when the case is to come into Court, Dick the
Brief-hunter, who has promised to take me there, seems nervous.
Yet he is still confident that, if " old Peosee " is the judge, he will
"pull the thing off." It will be, apparently, a case of "Pull
Fibbins, pull Peosee."
In Court I occupy a seat just behind him, because—as he observes
"grinding away at the case, and know the subject

down to the ground"—which
I don't think he does. I there-
fore am to act as his reserves,
also as his prompter, and to
supply him with the names of
cases which he has forgotten,
and which he wishes to quote.
Kather a responsible position.
Should feel more confidence in
result if Fibblns had told me
of this prompter arrangement
before the very morning when
the trial comes on.

"OldPEOSEE,"

appears to my
untutored gaze to
be rather a digni-
fied occupant of
the Bench. I
don't know whe-
ther he cherishes
any personal or
professional ani-
mosity against
Dick Fibbins,
but directly the
latter opens his
mouth to begin,
Peosee seems in-
clined to jump
down it.

" A compli-
cated case of foreclosure?" hegrowls. " You needn't tell us that. All
foreclosure cases are complicated, /ever saw one yet that wasn't."

Fibbins goes along unimpeded for a minute or two, Peosee having
thrown himself back with an air of resigned inattention, one of the
other Judges taking furtive notes, and the third resting his elbows
on his desk, and his head on his elbows, and eyeing me with a stony
and meaningless stare. Can he suddenly have gone mad ?

I have no time to consider this interesting point, as Fibbins is
again in difficulties about some precedent that he wants to quote,
but which he has forgotten, and turns sharply round on me, saying,
in a fierce whisper—

" What the doose is that case ? "

I look hurriedly down on the sheet of paper on which (as I fancy)
I have jotted down the authorities bearing on the subject, and reply,
also in a whisper—" Cookson and Gedge."

"The Court, m'luds," Fibbins airily proceeds, as if he were in-
debted entirely to his own memory for the information, "held in
Cookson and Gcdge that a mortgagor who desires to foreclose-"

" Where is the case you mention?" suddenly asks the Judge who
was staring at me a moment ago. He is now engaged in first looking
at my instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that
there was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined
to probe to the bottom.

Volume Six of the Law Reports, m' lud."

'•'Page?" snaps Peoseu.

"Page 181, 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 offen-
sively 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 " autho-
rities" 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 B.ogees & 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 nie f 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 Peosee'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 Eestaurant, 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 fiushed—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, Peosee 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 any-
body " cowered" in Court on that memorable occasion, it was certainly
not poor old Peosee.

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 1 a costume play,' and that the scene is laid in England.
It may, however, interest sensitive dramatists to know that Lord Tenny-
son 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 \?e 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,

If may be here, it may be there,

The fat too thickly on -with care A mt h'erc and there

lo cut it down be not afraid. wm be nccessary.

But oh, if here and there I seem

To have half-said what I should say,
Give me the start—I '11 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 bv 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 iu
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.

A MYSTEEiorsiY Masonic Line.—" Oh, for a Lodge in some
vast 'wilderness ! "

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