Charles,' as they
invariably call him. And the foregoing paragraph, though not at all
would-be-Lamb-like in expression, looks to me horribly like a blatant
bid for your love. I hasten to add, therefore, that no absolutely
kind-hearted person could bear, as I rejoice, to go and hear cases
even in the civil courts. If it be true that the instinct of cruelty
is at the root of our pleasure in theatrical drama, how much more is
there of savagery in our going to look on at the throes of actual
litigation--real men and women struggling not in make-believe, but in
dreadful earnest! I mention this aspect merely as a corrective to what
I had written. I do not pretend that I am ever conscious, as I enter a
court, that I am come to gratify an evil instinct. I am but conscious
of being glad to be there, on tiptoe of anticipation, whether it be to
hear tried some particular case of whose matter I know already
something, or to hear at hazard whatever case happen to be down for
hearing. I never tire of the aspect of a court, the ways of a court.
Familiarity does but spice them. I love the cold comfort of the pale
oak panelling, the scurrying-in-and-out of lawyers' clerks, the
eagerness and ominousness of it all, the rustle of silk as a K.C.
edges his way to his seat and twists his head round for a quick
whispered parley with his junior, while his client, at the solicitors'
table, twists his head round to watch feverishly the quick mechanical
nods of the great man's wig--the wig that covers the skull that
contains the brain that so awfully much depends on.
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