Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1852-03-23
IPRICE ONE CENT
BLEAK HI o u = e +.
By CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I.
In Han ny.

.. I'm CHI ANCE
LONDON. Mch@lmas Term lately over, and
tho Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
lmplacable November weather. As much mud
in the streets, as if the waters had but newly re-
tired from the face of the earth, and it would not
be wonderful to meet Megalosaurus, forty feet
long or so, wadding like an elephantine lizard
up Hoborn-hI Smoke lowering down from
chimney pots, making soft black drlzze, with
flakes Of SCOT init as big as full grown snow
fiakes-gone into mourning, one might imagine,
for the death of the sun. Dogs, undlstinguishabIe
in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to
their very blinkers Foot passengers .jostllng one
another's umbrellas, in general infection Of i'll
temper, and loosmg their foot hold at street corn
ers where tens Of thousands Of other foot passen-
gers have been slipping and sliding since the day
broke, (ifthe day ever broke) adding new de-
posits 10 the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at
o those points tenaclously to the pavement, and
accommodating at compound interest
Fog every where. Fog up the river, where it
flows among the green ats and meadows; fog
down the river, where it rolls de6ed among the
tiers ofshpping, and the water-side pollutions of
a great and dirty city. Fog on the Essex marsh
es, fog on the Kentsh heights. Fog creeping in
to the cabooses ofcollier-brigs; fog lying out
the yards, and lowering in the rigging of great
ships; fog dropping on the gunwales Of barges
and small boats. Fog inihe eyes and threats of
ancient Greenwich pensioners, whIzzing by the
fireside Of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl
of the afternoon pipe of the wrathul skipper,
down in his close cabin; fog cruelty pnching the
toes and fingers of his shyering little prentice boy
on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping
over the parapets into a neither sky of fog, with
fog all round them, as they were up in ball
loon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places
in the streets, much as The sun may, from the
spongy fields, be seen to loom by husbandman
and ploughboy Most the shops lighted two
hours before their time-as the gas seems to
know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog
is densesi, and the muddy streets are muddIest,
near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appro-
pirate ornament for the threshold of leaden-
headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard
by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hail. at the
very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Cham
cellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Never can there come fog too thick, never can
there come mud and mire too deep,to assert with
the grouping and laundering condition which this
High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoaTy
sinners, holds, this day, in the sight Of Heaven
and earth. B o.li fsaq avld
On such an afternoon, If ever, the Lord High
Chancellor ought to be sitting here, and here he
Is, with foggy glory round his head, softly
fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, adj
dressed by large advocate with great whiskers,
a little voice, andan intermnable brief, and out
wardly directing his contemplation to the lantern
IN the roof, where he see nothing but fog
On such an afternoon, some score of members of
the High Court ofChancery bar ought to be---as
here they are---mistily engaged in one of the ten
thousand stages ofan endless cause, tripping one
another up on slippery presidents, grouping knee
deepln technicalles, running their gOat-hair and
horse-halr warded heads against walls of words,
and making a pretence of equity with serious ia
ces, as players might. On such an afternoon, the
various solicitors in the cause, some two or three
of whom have inherited it from their fathers who
made a fortune by it, onght TO be---as are they
not?---ranged in a line, in a long matted well
(but you might look in vain for Truth at the
bottom of it, between the registrars led table
and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-biIls, an
swers, rejoinders, njunctiOns, afidavits, issues,
references to masters, and masters reports,
mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them.
w ell may the court be dim; with wasting candles
here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in
it, as if it would never get out; well may the
stained glass windows lose their original coIors.
and admit no light of day into the place; well
may the unlntated from the streets, no peep
in through the glass panes in the door, be deferred
from entrance by Its owlish aspect, and by the
drawl languidly echoing to the roof from the pad
ded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks
into the lantern that has no light in it, and where
the attendant wigs are all stuck in fog bank!
This is the Court o. Chancery, which has its de-
caying houses and its bighted lands in every
shire; winch has its worn-out lunatic in every
mad house, and its dead in every church. ward:
whichhas its ruined suor, with his slipshod heels
and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging
through the round OF every mans acquaintance;
which gives to moneyed might the means album
dainty Of wearying out the right; which so ex-
hausts finances, patience, courage, hope; SO over
throws the brain and breaks the heart; that there
is not an honorable man among its practitioners
who would not give-who does not often give
the warning, "Sutfer any wrong that can be done
you, rather than come here!'' ~
s. Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's
court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chan
cellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three
counsel who are never in any cause, and the well
of solicitors before mentioned! There is the regis
trar below the Judge, in wig and gown; and
there are two or three maces, or petty-bags or
priyy-purses, or whatever they may be. in legal
court suits. These are all yawning; for no crumb
OF amusement ever falls from JGrnduce and
Jarndyce (the cause in hand, which was
squeezed dry, years upon years ago. The short
hand writer's, the reporters of the court, and the
reporters Of the newspapers, invariably decamp
with the Test ofthe regulars when Jarndyce and
Jarndyce comes on. Their places are blank.
Standing on seat at The side of The hail. the bet
ter to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is little
mad old woman, 10 squeezed bonnet, who is
always in court, from its sitting to its rising and
always expecting some incomprehensible ludg.
ment 70 be given, in her favor, Some say she
really IS or was,ya party to a suit; but no one
knows for certain, because nc. onsi cares. She
carries some small litter in reticuIe, which sha