Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 358: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Pickwick Abroad. 997 posite to drink gin and water and smoke-cigars with the tipstaf who ad charge of him, the sporting friends who waited for him, and the attorney who had seen him through the Court. Another Insolvent was then summoned into the box; and as the memory of this individual was exceedingly treacherous relative to cer- tain goods for the disposal of which he could not exactly account, a long and tedious examination ensued ; and after a species of bull- baiting which lasted about two hours, nothing having been elicited, Mr Commissioner Buckphiz tried an experiment with a view of refreshing the Insolvent’s memory, and remanded him for the space of eighteen months from the day in which he filed his petition. The discomfited Insolvent received his sentence with a singularly wry face; and having his seat in the pew allotted to his fraternity, he took from his blue cotton handkerchief a little luncheon of cold veal and bread which he had brought with him; and that, with the addition of some salt extracted from his waistcoat pocket, seemed to console him for his dis- appointment. On the following morning the nobleman's case was only slightly alluded to in the public papers; whereas the examination of the unfortunate devil who was thus remanded, was set forth in all the glaring colours and in all the embellishments usually adopted in such reports. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the case of Lord Swales was ten thousand times blacker than that of this poor man: but the former was the son of a peer; and the latter was a broken- down linen-draper. It is highly amusing and edifying at the same time, to observe the species of sensation which takes place in the Court when an Insolvent scends from the box in which he had so conspicuously figured. The Commissioner looks up to see if the windows in the lanthorn on the roof be sufficiently open to ventilate the room: the old clerk beneath him tumbles about a parcel of papers which bear no reference in the slightest degree to any thing with which he has todo at the moment; the other clerk in the brown coat and brass buttons, and with sandy hair, next to him, looks very mysteriously over his papers ; Messieurs Butler and Roughrow converse in whispers; the barrister in ctacles behind them reads the Times with more desperate attention than before, because, as he has not got a brief, he must be doing some- thing; the reporters mend their pens ; some of the attomeys proceed to the gin-shop opposite, to refresh themselves with a small drop of strong waters, their stomachs having been long estranged to weaker liquids ; a mother, seated amongst the spectators, ventures to give suck to her child, who now screams with temporary impunity; the man at the little desk underneath the Insolvent’s examination-box, administers certain small incitements to perjury, vulgarly called oaths, relative to the correctness of schedules, to those petitioners who may have been heard ; and, in fact, the interval is one of genera] excitement and ustle. This interval is also of great utility to those attorneys who either do not choose to join their brethren in “a go of gin,” or who have already had too much to stand any more. They congregate in .a small group together, and discuss the merits of their various clients ; or else they hasten to assure those who have just been heard, that they are certain to obtain their discharge, whereas they are morally CO stor q) SS (c@