Mr. Spenlow
ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being
constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old
clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business
several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion
penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of
the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India
sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink. We had
an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day--about excommunicating a
baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate--and as the
evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a
calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished.
However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in
no end of costs; and then the baker's proctor, and the judge, and the
advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town
together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.

The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks
and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors'
Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all
points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then;
though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my
time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think
was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature
of man to bear.

We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in
reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in
the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a
solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive,
less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily
in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and
that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible
to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by
solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race
of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.

I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional
business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there
was a neat little estate of thirty or fort