The Fee! the fee! the welcome fee!
The new! the fresh! the scarce to me!
Without a brief, without a pound,
I travel the circuit round and round.
I draw with the pens at each assize,
If ink before me handy lies.
I’ve got a fee! I’ve got a fee!
I’ve got what I so seldom see;
With the judge above, and the usher below,
I wait upon the last back row.
Should a silk gown come with argument deep,
What matter! I can go to sleep.
I love (oh, _how_ I love) to bide
At some fierce, foaming, senior’s side.
When every mad word stuns the court,
And the judges wish he’d cut it short,
And tell him the case of So-and-So,
His argument doth to atoms blow.
I never hear Chancery’s dull, tame jaw,
But I love the fun of the Common Law,
And fly to the Exchequer, Bench and Pleas,
As a mouse flies back to a Cheshire cheese!
For the cheese it always seem’d to me,
Especially if I got a fee!
My whiskers are white, my head is bald,
Since the dreary hour when I was call’d.
The Steward he whistled as out he told
The fees at my call from a packet of gold.
And never was heard of a step so wild
As took to the bar the briefless child.
I’ve liv’d since then, in term and out,
Some thirty years, or thereabout;
Without a brief, but power to range
From court to court by way of change.
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Will find me most likely without a fee.
* * * * *
[Illustration: A SORE POINT.--_First Articled Clerk._ “Well how did
your private theatricals go off?”
_Second Ditto._ “Pre’y well. My moustache went off at once, but nothing
would induce the pistol to go off in the duel scene!”--(_Dropping the
subject._)--“How’s your mother?”]
* * * * *
SONG FOR THE BURGLAR TO HIS “PAL” WHO “PEACHED.”--“Never again with
_you_, Robbin’.”
* * * * *
SUITORS’ SUFFERINGS.--As law is to rheumatism, so is equity to gout.
The fusion of law and equity may be said to form the counterpart of
rheumatic gout.
* * * * *
[Illustration: “BEHIND THE SCENES.”--_First Judge._ “Breach of promise
still running?”
_Second Judge._ “Going wonderfully. No standing room. “What are _you_
doing?”
_First Judge._ “A building contract. Wretched business: not a soul in
the place!”]
* * * * *
A SPRING CIRCUIT.--Jumping through the hoops held for the riders round
a circus.
* * * * *
SUITABLE SITE FOR A POLICE “COURT.”--The area.
* * * * *