Having been thus initiated in the making out of personal accounts, the pupil must now turn his attention to the methods of Book-keeping adopted by "gentlemen in difficulties," connected with that peculiar process of law which professes to put new wind into a collapsed bladder, and enable an empty sack to stand upright. The example is called taking the "Benefit;" the principal part of which is making out a Schedule, which may be done as follows:—
STATEMENT OF MY PERSONAL AND GENERAL EXPENDITURE, VERIFIED BY OATH.
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| Paid for | twinkling a bed-post | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| Spouting the tea-kettle | 1 | 15 | 0 | |
| New teething the hair comb | 1 | 10 | 0 | |
| Stopping holes in cullender | 1 | 5 | 6 | |
| Pulling the gray hairs from hearth broom | 0 | 15 | 0 | |
| Whitewashing inside of chimney | 1 | 15 | 0 | |
| A Newgate-Calendar-novel, to soften hard-hearted cabbages before boiling | 1 | 11 | 6 | |
| Pectoral lozenges for short-winded bellows | 0 | 8 | 6 | |
| 1000 cigars, to smoke for cure of corns | 12 | 10 | 0 | |
| Pigeons'-milk on the 1st of April | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| A leather saw | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| A worsted hatchet | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| New vamping and welting India-rubber conscience | 5 | 5 | 0 | |
| Loan to Thimble-Rig, Esq. | 15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Ditto to Billy Blackleg | 20 | 0 | 0 | |
| Ditto to Richard Roe | 25 | 0 | 0 | |
| Ditto to John Doe | 25 | 0 | 0 | |
| Ditto to Jack Noakes | 40 | 0 | 0 | |
| Ditto to Tom Styles[7] | 60 | 0 | 0 | |
| £204 | 10 | 6 | ||
Notwithstanding the copious examples above given, there is one other kind of Book-keeping which can only be thoroughly understood by the first accountants, and is only practised by the first of practitioners. This is making up a book for the St. Leger, which is
LEGERDEMAIN COMPLETE.
| An Account of the Expenditure of the "Secret Service Money," from 1825 to 1841. | |||||
| £ | s. | d. | |||
| Paid | to Colonel Queerum, for a series of Tricknometrical admeasurements of the length and breadth of public credulity | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | |
| To Captain Audacity, for endeavouring to determine the "heights" of "impudence" in Whig Radicalism | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Colonel Feel-your-way, for surveying the Terra Incognita of ways and means, per session | 1,500 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Dr. Sapscull, for instructions in sapping and mining the constitution | 2,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Dr. Gammon, for moonlight lessons in the art of Mystification and Jack-o'-Lanternism | 500 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Dr. Lardner, for horizontal sections of the broadest latitude of latitudinarian policy | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Lord Bumfiddle, for a series of impracticable experiments in the House of Lords | 5,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Lord Bumfiddle, for his project to light both houses with "cats' eyes," to facilitate legislation in the dark | 2,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To expenses of a tour to the Devil's Ace-à-Peak, to discover the polarity of political consistency | 3,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Dr. Bubblejock, for a new plan of making long speeches out of soap bubbles | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Jack Pudding, for the sale of nostrums, "pitch plasters," and hocusses | 2,500 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Döbler, for instructions in legerdemain, sleight of hand, and hocus pocus | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To J. H. for his chemical extraction of the blunderful from the public accounts | 1,500 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To a cargo of soap and soft sawder, to unite the dissenters | 500 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To various sops thrown to the Irish hound "Cerberus," on going into the Tartarus of a new session | 17,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Mesmerizing a Whig Lord, at stated intervals, and for dust to throw into the eyes of the Church | 3,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Oliver Hill, for his plan of buying and selling, and living by the loss | 100 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Pawnbroker's interest on pawning the crown and keeping the Queen in check | 5,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To pepper, mustard, Congreve rockets, and Spanish flies, for seasoning speeches at public meetings | 2,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To 150 yards of new spouting for Exeter Hall, and for the repair of weathercocks at St. Stephen's | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| For putting a new bottom to the fundamental maxims of English law, (paid by Sheriffs) | 5,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To a constant supply of "hot water" for both Houses, and for the use of "cold water" to throw on petitions | 5,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Dr. Shuttlecock Casey, for his plan of "water grueling" the poor, and "blowing up" schoolmasters with "small beer" science | 0 | 0 | 0 | ¼ | |
| To "Hogs' Wittles," of various kinds, in the shape of pamphlets, addressed to the swinish multitude | 3,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Daniel O'Connell, for pulling the wires of the political Punch and Judy, seven sessions | 150,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Scott the diver, for going to the bottom of the Exchequer bills affair, and reporting unsound | 1,000 | 0 | 0 | ||
| To Colonel Common Sense, for blowing up the wreck of the "Impracticable," and reporting "safe anchorage" (unpaid) | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| £215,600 | 0 | 0 | ¼ | ||
CHARLES I.—A BLOCK-HEAD.