es this mean? Is the happiness of a sensitive and
confiding female to be trifled away _by such shallow artifices as
these_?'"

I recall that admirable judge and pleasant man, the late Lord FitzGerald,
who was fond of talking of this trial, saying to me that Buzfuz lost a
good point here, as he might have dwelt on the mystic meaning of tomato
which is the "love apple," that here was the "secret correspondence," the
real "cover for hidden fire."

He concluded by demanding exemplary damages as "the recompense you can
award my client. And for these damages she now appeals to an
enlightened, a high-minded, a right feeling, a conscientious, a
dispassionate, a sympathising, a contemplative jury of her civilized
countrymen!"

THE PLAINTIFF'S CASE.

It was really of a very flimsy kind but "bolstered-up" and carried
through by the bluster of the serjeant and the smartness of his junior.
It rested first on a dialogue between Mr. Pickwick and his landlady which
was overheard, in fact by several persons; second, on a striking
situation witnessed by his three friends who entered unexpectedly and
surprised him with Mrs. Bardell in his arms; third, on some documentary
evidence, and lastly, on a damaging incident disclosed by Winkle.

The first witness "put in the box," was Mrs. Martha Cluppins--an intimate
friend of the plaintiffs.

We know that she was sister to Mrs. Raddle, who lived far away in
Southwark, and was the landlady of Mr. Sawyer. She might have been
cross-examined with effect as to her story that she had been "out buying
kidney pertaties," etc. Why buy these articles in Goswell Street and
come all the way from Southwark? What was she doing there at all? This
question could have been answered only in one way--which was that the
genial author fancied at the moment she was living near Mrs. Bardell.

Besides this, there was another point which Snubbin, in
cross-examination, ought to have driven home. Mrs. Cluppins was of an
inferior type, of the common washerwoman or "charing" sort; her language
was of Mrs. Gamp's kind; "which her name was" so and so. Yet, this
creature, in another room, or on the stairs, the door being "on the jar,"
can repeat with her limited appreciation, those dubious and imperfect
utterances of Mr. Pickwick! How could she remember all? Or could she
understand them? Impossible! She, however, may have caught up
something.

Winkle, too, said he heard something as he came up the