Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/255

faculty, having the confidence to demand item for his pains and trouble, when all the while he does nothing but hover over a quart pot. He is as offensive to the attorneys as flies are to a galled horse, and whereas their ne plus ultra is ten groats, Mr. Solicitor forsooth claims double fees with authority, and if the clyent prove so saucy to deny it, he will rage like Tom of Bedlam, but if that will not prevail he'll cast a squeezing look like that of Vespasian. . . . In the society of true and genuine lawyers he is like an owl among so many lapwings, and is no more fit to converse with them than a hogherd is to preach a sermon or a cinder-wench to wait upon a countess. . . . He writes a bill of costs in such worm-eaten characters that 'tis past the skill of a Rosicrucian to discover the apocaliptical meaning, yet for all that he will not abate you an ace of the summa totalis, and that, to be sure, shall be plain enough. Wherefore, he may very fitly be called the inquisition of the purse . . . and more than that, he scorns to cheat you in hugger mugger, but will not fail to do so before your face. He is like the man that cried, Any tooth good barber, rather than stand out for a wrangler, if he can pump no chink out of you. He will manage your cause for a breakfast, being a notable artist at spunging. Oh! he's a terrible slaughter man at a Thanksgiving dinner. He out shines a bailiff in all his cheating faculties, and I know none outstrips him except his infernal grandfather. In fine, he is the yeoman's horseleech, the gentleman's rubbing brush, and the courtier's quid pro quo. He is the summum bonum of knavery; in judgment a meer pigmy; in shew the beard of a demi-blazing star. To be brief, he is like a lamp without oil, a trumpet without sound, a smoak without fire, a fiddle out of tune, or a bell without a clapper; and differs from a lawyer as a shrimp does from a lobster, a frog from an elephant, or a tom-tit from an eagle.—The Irish Law Times.