pulls out several exceedingly shallow drawers
—you watch his proceedings with fevered
interest-- dialogue resumed.) " I see you were
engaged the other day, Mr. Chopfall, in that
very remarkable case"—rattling sound of a
metallic nature—" of, of, Culpepper versus
Peppercull"—instrument selected from armoury—
"ah, remarkable case, very remarkable case
indeed"—instrument exchanged, with additional
rattling, for a more deadly one—" Yes, gentlemen
in your profession must see a curious"—
additional weapons selected, with rattling, in case
of failure of those first chosen; Mr. Scrunchem
returns from table, and looks you in the face
as if he were a harmless acquaintance— " Now
allow me to ask you, Mr. Chopfall, were you
entirely satisfied with the line taken by the Senior
Counsel in that case?" Mr. Scrunchem
receiving an incoherent reply, goes round to back
of chair " I merely ask, you know—open—
from a feeling—a little wider—— "

It is impossible to go on. The situation is
too horrible. I wonder whether it is mistaken
mercy to talk to a man under the circumstances
about Peppercull versus Culpepper. Such
conversation appears to me to aggravate the misery of
the transaction. Yet the united wisdom of the
whole profession seems to have led its members
to the conclusion that it is right to engage their
patients in such discourse. For my part, I
think there ought to be a band of music— very
loud music—in the operating-room, and that at
the moment of extraction there should be such a
sudden crash of drums and trumpets—nay, I would
not object to a discharge of musketry—that you
really should not know what had happened to
you, so great would be the general nervous
shock of the moment. The only danger would
be that the shock might really unsettle the
sufferer's reason, and he might go out into
Saville-row a gibbering maniac from that day
forth. So, perhaps, it is better as it is.

Almost all professional talk belongs to one of
these great classes the legal and the dental.
Even the portrait-painter has not been able
to strike out anything wholly distinct from
the line adopted by the two professions just
mentioned. He, like the dentist, is a deceiver,
though not generally such a gay deceiver; for it
may be taken, as a rule, that all dentists are
cheerful, and that all dentists' servants are
dismal. The truth, which the master disguises,
the servant reveals. The portrait-painter is a
deceiver. He is always trying to take you in,
about the length of time which his operations
will occupy. He pretends to be in good spirits
when he feels that the nose in his portrait is out
of drawing. He pretends also to take an
interest in conversation which he scarcely attends
to, in order to get the requisite twinkle in an
old gentleman's eye, or to prevent a young lady
from yawning, till her nose is red. When a man
has to converse with such objects in view, it
is a wonder if he can keep the talk going at
all, and I should think it not unlikely that a
slight incoherency was sometimes the result of
the attempt made by artists to discourse upon
the American question or the garotte
movement, while he is wrestling with that deadly
enemy on the canvas before him. I believe
this to be the hardest professional talk of all,
and—if coherent—the most creditable.

Of all the Small-Beer which it has been my lot
to chronicle, these last oozings of the conversation-vats
have been the most difficult to register,
the most frothy and uncontrollable, bursting out
first in one place and then in another, to my
confusion. Therefore, if this Chronicle should
appear to have something of a disjointed
character, I beg to say that it is nowise my fault,
but that it is entirely attributable to the peculiar
nature of the liquor I have had to register.
Even now, when I thought I had finished and
chronicled the last drop that had to be
chronicled, I find there is still a pint or so bubbling
up and insisting on being noticed, whether I
like it or not. The last pint I have to chronicle
is rather a low-class liquor, but it must not be
neglected.

As to the conversation of our lower orders, it
seems to me to be chiefly of two kinds. It
consists of simple statements relating to beer,
and in the course of which the expression " arf
a pint" occurs incessantly, and of complex
statements as to their own affairs generally,
relating to injuries by them sustained, and by
them resented, and which narratives are
interspersed throughout with the words " I says" to
an extent which surpasses all human
comprehension. "I says—he says—she says"—these
three forms of expression comprise almost the
entire conversational resources of the plebeian
population of Britain. Consider the talk of a
couple of lodging-house servants, as you may
overhear it by snatches, in any low neighbourhood,
on a Saturday night:

"So she comes down into the kitching, and
she says, 'olding the broken glass in her 'and,
she says, ' Who done this?' she says; so Martha,
she says, ' I'm sure I don't know,' she says--
just like that, she says; so then she turns round
upon me, quite fierce, and 'Then you done
it,' she says. 'I done it,' I says, 'begging
your pardon, mum,' I says, ' I never done
nothing,' I says, ' of the sort,' I says, ' no, nor yet
Martha,' I says, ' not if it was my dying-day,' I
says. ' Very well,' she says, ' I'll find out who
done it yet,' she says, ' and then if I don't stop
it off her wages'—she says—' I'll know the
reason why,' she says."

Or, follow a couple of workmen, and listen
to their dialogue:

"' No,' he says, ' we do not,' he says; ' you
haves to furnish your own scaffolding,' he says,
' and you set it up for yourselves,' he says.
' And them's the terms of the job?' I says.
' Yes,' he says, ' them is the terms of the job,'
he says, ' and if you don't like it,' he says, ' you
can leave it,' he says. 'And do you think,' I
says, ' that workmen such as me and my mates,'
I says, just like that, I says, ' is a going to
undertake a job on such terms as them?'
' George,' he says, ' whether you undertake it,'
he says, 'or leave it,' he says, 'it rests with