nod, and the hinges of Mr. Nebuchadnezzar's
friendly portals grow rusty for lack of visitors,
Sims drives a trade which may be familiarly
designated as "slack." Two or three
antiquated ushers and criers, messengers and
doorkeepers of the Law Courts adjacent are
faithful customers, but are no great shakes.
Your Nisi Prius underlings are mostly
temperate men, who, when they do drink, affect
mostly sherry and water, cold—shrub and
water, cold—and similar mild and long-lasting
potations. It is your criminal, but especially
your insolvency men who drink quick, and
frequently, and strongly, and always.
Detectives generally take glasses of sherry in
rapid succession and with an unmoved
countenance; for no quantity of sherry in any
number of glasses was ever known to make
a detective tipsy. Simple policemen take, as
a rule, neat gin, accompanying the act of
bibation with a frown, and following it
with a backhanded wipe of the lips and a
municipal cough. But your insolvency man,
your bankruptcy man, your notice-server,
your process-taker, your tipstaff,—these
be the men who love Bacchus. Not late
topers are they; for almost invariably they
hail their homeward-bound omnibuses about
ten minutes after the rising of the court;
but day-drinkers, perpetual runners out after
"drains" and "whets,"—men who, if you do not
find them at their posts, are sure to be "over
the way," or "have just stepped out," or are
"round the corner." I knew a public-house
(The File, Sheddle Street, Lincoln's-inn) whose
morning custom, arising from insolvency
officials, who drank hot gin-and-water between
the hours of eight and ten every morning,
could not have been less than three hundred
pounds a year. They may be nervous men,
these matutinal topers; and, living
constantly in an atmosphere of ruin, and blighted
hopes, and shattered fortunes, and delusive
speculations, may be afraid that, constantly
about the court as they are, they may come
to ruin themselves one day, and go through
the court, and so take plenty of gin-and-
water to keep their "peckers" up. Or
perchance (and this was suggested to me by an
envious man) they may, as promotion in the
Bankruptcy and Insolvency Courts is
regulated by seniority, be desirous of drinking
their seniors to death, and thereby stepping
into their vacant shoes. At all events, these
early, and potent, and constant "drains" give
these old boys habitually a groggy look, a
fuddly look, not to say a drunken look. Their
faces are the coffins of unnumbered "sixes" of
gin-and-water, and the pimples and grog-
blossoms are the nails thereon.

But I have diverged from "Sims." Besides
the old officials (pippin-faced, white-headed
old gentlemen mostly, with spotless white
neck-cloths fastened with silver buckles), there
come to the bar, during the dead season, a
sprinkling of the broken-down touters,
message-carriers, doers of odd jobs, poor
devils, whom I may call the helpers, and
"odd men" in the stable of law—the scullions
in the kitchen of justice—the bucks on the
cab-stand of equity. One or two of the
inevitable class of ruined clients, half-mad and
wholly heart-broken, haunt the coffee-room,
together with a pitiable object with red
whiskers, a drink-embossed face, a shambling
gait, who was really a Member of Parliament
—an Irish Member—a very, very long time
ago, who had a fine estate, and who begs a
little and borrows a little, but drinks a great
deal more than either—or than he eats, now.
Whisky, and late hours, and want, have
cracked his voice; but he can sing "Silent,
oh, Moyle" and "You remember Ellen"
yet, in a style to make the tears tremble
on your eyelids, and the half-crown you
know he is immediately afterwards about
to borrow leap out of your pocket, almost
spontaneously.

But, when Term is on—when the new trial
paper is full, and the old cause list not half
exhausted: you should see Sims then! Its
choked-up bar, its barricaded entry, its
crowded parlour and coffee-room, its thronged
bed-rooms. Avalanches of hats tumble up
and down stairs like inky snowballs; parchment
is as common as whitey-brown paper;
the pot-boy ties his shoes with red tape, and
as for ink, my gracious! The customers
drink it by quarts, so to speak. They suck it
up in goose-quills, and pour it into the
bowels of reams of foolscap paper. Then,
such an eager pressing; such a jostling,
squeezing, button-holding, hand-shaking,
fist-shaking, "dear friend" calling, "infernal
scoundrel" calling; such depth and acumen
of criticism displayed on the learning of
judges, the eloquence of counsel, the tact of
solicitors, the boldness of witnesses, the
discernment (or stupidity) of jurymen. Such
congratulations and free-hearted offers to
stand "glasses round." On the other hand,
such lamentations, and mournful looks, and
sullen drinking in corners, and passionate
recrimination. O Sims, Sims!

Yet another legal "public"—an hostelry
of civil law can I find. Know you the
lane where the smell of parchment and red
tape, the air redolent of wig-powder and
pounce tell of the deeds that are done in
their clime? Know you the lane that is
narrow and crooked, and dirty, and ill-
savouring as the laws which are twisted, and
tortured, and garbled, and misconstrued, in
the courts round about? Know you the lane
which the barrister paces in full forensic
costume—in undisguised wig and gown—a legal
knight of the road—with brief clutched closely
in his hand as though it were a pistol and he
would say, "Your fee or your life?" Know you
the lane where sharp-eyed little men hold fox-
like converse at street corners, or beneath the
shadow of the ancient gateway of Lincoln's Inn
con, anxiously, ravenously, huge skins of parchment
—the skins once of innocent, woolly-