surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles,
rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises read. And
when Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged in order,
as a class, with their backs considerately placed against a screen,
had begun, in rotation, to read the exercises which they had not
written, even then, each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle
of the whole proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had
stammered through his first line, and bowed to him, and told him
politely that he was a barrister from that moment. This was all
the ceremony. It was followed by a social supper, and by the
presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a pound of
sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in the way of needful
refreshment, by each grateful neophyte to each beneficent Bencher.
It may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten
the great do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony as
this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain designing
students of industrious habits found him out, took advantage of his
easy humour, persuaded him that it was discreditable to be a
barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, and lured
him, by the force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer's
chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself for
practice at the Bar. After a fortnight of self-delusion, the
curtain fell from his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and
shut up his books. But the retribution which had hitherto always
followed his little casual errors of industry followed them still.
He could get away from the conveyancer's chambers, but he could not
get away from one of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,--a
tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious pupil, with
ideas of his own about reforming the Law of Real Property, who has
been the scourge of Mr. Idle's existence ever since the fatal day