on both sides: old men coming up with ancient memories,
hedgers and ditchers, farmers and bailiffs and people of all sorts and
conditions, to prove and disprove where the boundary line really divides
Neighbour Naboth's vineyard from Neighbour Ahab's park."

"But surely Naboth will win?"

"All that depends upon a variety of things, such as, first, the
witnesses; secondly, the counsel; thirdly, the judge; fourthly, the
jury,"

"O," said my wife, "pray don't go on to a fifthly--it seems to me poor
Naboth is like to have a sorry time of it before he establish his
boundary line."

"Ay, if he ever do so: but he first is got into the hands of his Lawyers,
next into the hands of his Counsel, thirdly, into Chancery, fourthly,
into debt--"

"Pray, do not let us have a fifthly here either; I like not these
thirdlys and fourthlys, for they seem to bring poor Naboth into bad case;
but what said you about debt?"

"I say that Naboth, not being a wealthy man, but, as I take it, somewhat
in the position of neighbour Bumpkin, will soon be forced to part with a
good deal of his little property in order to carry on the action."

"But will not the action be tried in a reasonable time, say a week or
two?"

"I perceive," cried I, "that you are yet in the very springtide and
babyhood of innocence in these matters. There must be summonses for time
and for further time; there must be particulars and interrogatories and
discoveries and inspections and strikings out and puttings in and appeals
and demurrers and references and--"

"O, please don't. I perceive that poor Naboth is already ruined a long
way back. I think when you came to the interrogatories he was in want of
funds to carry on the action."

"A Chancery action sometimes takes years," said I.

"Years! then shame to our Parliament."

"I pray you do not take on so," said I. "Naboth, according to the decree
of Fate, is to be ruined. Jezebel did it in a wicked, clumsy and brutal
manner. Anyone could see she was wrong, and her name has been handed
down to us with infamy and execration. I now desire to show how Ahab
could have accomplished his purpose in a gentle, manly and scientific
manner and saved his wife's reputation. Naboth's action, carried as it
would be from Court to Court upon every possible point upon which an
appeal can go, under our present system, would effectually ruin him ages
before the boundary line could be settled. It would be all swallowed up
in