d have done.

"Farther depones, that, time and place aforesaid, the said A.B. said to
deponent, 'If you come another step nearer I'll kick you to hell'--which
the deponent verily believes he would have done."[45]

[Footnote 45: It is curious to observe how bitter a prejudice Themis has
against her own humbler ministers. Most of the bitterest legal jokes are
at the expense of the class who have to carry the law into effect. Take,
for instance, the case of the bailiff who had been compelled to swallow
a writ, and, rushing into Lord Norbury's court to proclaim the indignity
done to justice in his person, was met by the expression of a hope that
the writ was "_not returnable_ in this court."]

I know not whether "lay gents," as the English bar used to term that
portion of mankind who had not been called to itself, can feel any
pleasure in wandering over the case-books, and picking up the funny
technicalities scattered over them; but I can attest from experience
that, to a person trained in one set of technicalities, the pottering
about among those of a different parish is exceedingly exhilarating.
When one has been at work among interlocutors, suspensions, tacks,
wadsets, multiplepoindings, adjudications in implement, assignations,
infeftments, homologations, charges of horning, quadriennium utiles,
vicious intromissions, decrees of putting to silence, conjoint actions
of declarator and reduction-improbation,--the brain, being saturated
with these and their kindred, becomes refreshed by crossing the border
of legal nomenclature, and getting among common recoveries, demurrers,
Quare impedits, tails-male, tails-female, docked tails, latitats,
avowrys, nihil dicits, cestui que trusts, estopels, essoigns, darrein
presentments, emparlances, mandamuses, qui tams, capias ad faciendums or
ad withernam, and so forth. After vexatious interlocutors in which the
Lord Ordinary has refused interim interdict, but passed the bill to try
the question, reserving expenses; or has repelled the dilatory defences,
and ordered the case to the roll for debate on the peremptory defences;
or has taken to avizandum; or has ordered re-revised condescendence and
answers on the conjoint probation; or has sisted diligence till caution
be found judicio sisti; or has done nearly all these things together in
one breath,--it is like the consolation derived from meeting a companion
in adversity, to find that at Westminster Hall, "In fermedon the tenant
havi