Summons for further and better answers.—Chorus.
More summonses for more, further, better, and all sorts of things.—Chorus.
All this repeated by the other side, of course; because each has his proper innings. There is great fairness and impartiality in the game. Something was always going up from the foot of this Jacob’s ladder called “the Master” to the higher regions called the Court of Appeal. The simplest possible matter, which any old laundress of the Temple ought to have been competent to decide by giving both the parties a box on the ear, was taken before the Master, from the Master to the Judge, from the Judge to the Divisional Court, and from the Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal, at the expense of the unfortunate litigants; while Judges, who ought to have been engaged in disposing of the business of the country, were occupied in deciding legal quibbles and miserable technicalities. All this I saw in my dream. Up and down this ladder Bumpkin and Snooks were driven—one going up the front while the other was coming down the back. And I heard Bumpkin ask if he wasn’t entitled to the costs which the Court gave when he won. But the answer of Mr. Prigg was, “No, my dear sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire.” And I saw a great many more ups and downs on the ladder which I should weary the reader by repeating: they are all alike equally useless and equally contemptible. Then I thought that poor Bumpkin went up the ladder with a great bundle on his back; and his face seemed quite
changed, so that I hardly knew him, and I said to Horatio, the pale boy—
“Who is that going up now? It looks like Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“Oh, no,” said Horatio, “that’s old Bumpkin—it’s a regler sweater for him, ain’t it?”
I said, “Whatever can it be? will he ever reach the top?”
Here Bumpkin seemed to slip, and it almost took my breath away; whereat the pale boy laughed, stooping down as he laughed, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets,
“By George!” he exclaimed, “what a jolly lark!”
“I hope he won’t fall,” I exclaimed. “What has he got on his back?”