Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

o2 REYNOLDS’ WORKS of the judge; at all events if he were a real judge, and pre- sided at the Old Bailey, it would need but a single glance at his countenance to convince the culprit brought before him that justice would assuredly be tempered with mercy. But to return to our narrative: the lord chief baron entered the apartment which we have above described, and with measured steps he ascended to the judicial bench. There he bowed to the bar, and the bar bowed to him, so that if it were not for the evidences of conviviality abounding upon the several tables, the spectators might really have fancied themselves in the presence of all the real ceremony and grave formality of a court of justice. Having deposited himself upon'the bench, the lord chief baron exclaimed, ‘* Waiter! ”’ ‘Yes, my lord,’ replied one of his own tavern functionaries. ‘“A glass of brandy and water and a cigar,’’ said the great legal luminary, and thereupon a general laugh ensued. throughout the room. When the judicial wants were duly supplied, and the Havana in the judicial lips was emitting its fragrant vapours, the clerk of the court announced the case that was for trial. It was a civil action that was thus to occupy attention, and a number of the guests having been sworn in as jurymen, one of the gentlemen officiating as the barristers opened the proceedings. It is not our purpose to give any description of the subject-matter of the trial, because in a mere narrative form it would lose the greater portion of its interest. But we must observe that the persons officiating as barristers acquitted themselves with no ordinary degree of talent, delivering speeches which for their easy and continuous flow might have made the orators the subject of envy on the part of many a stammering, stuttering, thick-pated practitioner at Westminster Hall. Witnesses were exam- ined, and these kept the company -in a continual roar of laughter. From time to time the lord chief baron himself seasoned the proceedings with some witty interjections, which added to the general merriment. But the cream of the whole affair was the judicial summing up. Sparkling wit, exquisite humour, sly sarcasm, and a perfect assumption of the air and manner of the real judge characterized the lord chief baron’s part of the performance. There was one incident that told admirably. It happened that the in- ~ Gomichbooks (E(0)