Harpy, our first partner, was suave and gentlemanly in manner; thus, his chief occupation was to soothe, flatter, or, as he phrased it, "to talk over" those clients whom his compatriots had offended by insolence, or disgusted by hypocrisy, and who threatened to transfer their business and their papers elsewhere—i.e. to go out of the frying-pan into the fire.
Behold me, then, commencing life on the summit of a three-legged stool, in a dreary room, which overlooked a gloomy back-court, abandoned to weeds and a few broken bottles, and where nought living was seen, save an amatory cat or so prowling along the wall. I was intrenched among green boxes and bundles of musty, dusty papers, which had travelled to and fro for years, from the said dreary office to the various courts of law, increasing in bulk and volume on their travels, until each process—each fatal heir-loom—at last smothered its proprietor, the fool or knave, who, bitten by the amor litigandi of the modern Scots, and spurred on by a faithless and dishonest "man of business," or lost in a sea of duplicates and rejoinders—borrowing up of processes and paying down fees; fighting before Lords Ordinary and extraordinary—bewildered amid the difficulties, endless repetitions and absurd amplifications, doubts, delays, and expenses of the legal maelstrom into which Macfarisee had lured him, found the "record closed," when his last shilling had gone.
To me, the atmosphere in which I found myself was stifling. It was redolent of wax, red-tape, law-calf, and old parchment; and there was around me an incessant jargon about decrees and decisions, quirks, quibbles, statutes of limitation, judgments by default, writs of error and insolvency, acts of cessio bonorum, charges of caption and horning, cases sent through outer and inner houses to avizandum and the devil; and, save a hard-working gentlemanly lad, who died a Lord of Council and Session, and, than whom, no better ever sat upon the Scottish bench, my compeers were selfish, vulgar, and obnoxious to me, as their conversation consisted chiefly of pot-house wit, second-hand jokes, and empty nothings. Save alcohol, all spirit had long since died out of them, and at the voice of Macfarisee, they trembled as if under galvanism. Nothing but my repugnance for them, and daily irritation at the absurd assumption of Harpy and the hypocrisy of Macfarisee, prevented me from sinking into a state of mental atrophy, though exceedingly mercurial in temperament and itinerant in habit.
Hard work, however distasteful to a hero in embryo, I could have endured with patience; but the bearing of the three parvenus whom I served, and who were cold, thankless, consequential as bashaws, and rude at times even to the verge of brutality, soured my temper and maddened my fiery spirit.
On the summit of that legal tripod, the three-legged stool already referred to, I passed the greater portion of the year 1791.
There are times now when I think I viewed the poor ephemeræ, whose drudge I deemed myself, through a false medium; as I considered all who stood between me and the army as the natural enemies of mankind; and, doubtless too often, when I should have been drawing a deed or engrossing an account, I was drawing a phantom sword, engrossed in the pages of a novel, or following the merry drums, the glittering accoutrements, and flaunting cockades of a recruiting party. In short, I believe the reader will already perceive that it was not in human power to make a lawyer out of such quicksilver material as Master Oliver Ellis.
It was towards the close of the year already named, that a change came over the monotonous tenor of my way; and, like many other heroes who have flourished since the days of Mark Antony, I must needs fall in love. The way in which this event—so important in such a narrative as mine—came about was as follows.
One afternoon, when I was indulging in some of my usual day dreams, after reading the gazette which detailed the great treaty by which we prostrated the power of the valiant Tippo Saib, I was roused by the harsh and authoritative voice of Mr. Quirky, commanding me to accompany him and Macfarisee on business a few miles from town, To say whither, or what about, would have been too great a condescension in men of their vast consequence; so I snatched my hat gladly (anything active was a change from the monotony of a desk at which I worked like a negro on monkey's allowance), and, after receiving into my custody a legal green bag, filled with papers, on a hackney-coach being called, we drove out of town.
The month was October, and the woods wore the sombre hues of autumn. The wild rose still bloomed in the wayside hedges; the house-martin, the redwing, and the swallow, were still twittering about in search of the red berries, the haw, the hip, the sloe, and the elder, which now furnished a feast for them all. We whirled on amid copsewood and long lines of trees, that bordered or sheltered the bare fields, and exhibited on their dropping leaves all shades of russet, yellow, amber, dark-green, and red. The time was evening, and the dewy gossamer spread its silver web, laden with dew, from tree to tree; and as those persons whom I accompanied never deigned to address me, but conversed together in whispers, I had nothing to draw my attention from the objects visible on each side of the way, through the hackney-coach glasses, after the dusk enabled me to lay aside a canting tract, which Macfarisee had solemnly put into my hand when we started, and which, in politeness rather than hypocrisy, I had been pretending to peruse for some time.
At last we turned into an avenue of fine sycamores, through the waving branches of which the moonlight fell in flaky gleams, and under which were two lines of the flowering arbutus and monthly rose in full bloom. The hoofs and wheels scattered wide the rustling autumn leaves that lay thick in the old avenue, and we speedily drew up on the gravel that lay before the portico of a handsome mansion.