good reputation among your neighbours by this same clothing-trade,
and it were madness to leave it off. Besides, there are few that
know all the tricks and cheats of these lawyers. Does not your own
experience teach you how they have drawn you on from one term to
another, and how you have danced the round of all the courts, still
flattering you with a final issue; and, for aught I can see, your
cause is not a bit clearer than it was seven years ago." "I will be
hanged," says John, "if I accept of any composition from Strutt or
his grandfather; I'll rather wheel about the streets an engine to
grind knives and scissors. However, I'll take your advice, and look
over my accounts."

* A new Parliament: the aversion of a Tory House of Commons to war.



CHAPTER XI. How John looked over his Attorney's Bill.*

* Looking over the accounts.

When John first brought out the bills, the surprise of all the
family was unexpressible at the prodigious dimensions of them; they
would have measured with the best bale of cloth in John's shop.
Fees to judges, puny judges, clerks, prothonotaries, philisers,
chirographers, under-clerks, proclamators, counsel, witnesses,
jurymen, marshals, tipstaffs, criers, porters; for enrollings,
exemplifications, bails, vouchers, returns, caveats, examinations,
filings of words, entries, declarations, replications, recordats,
nolle prosequies, certioraries, mittimuses, demurrers, special
verdicts, informations, scire facias, supersedeas, habeas corpus,