The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) | Page 6

bad for me, so I went as well.
There was a great crowd, of course, but I kept my eye on John's tall chimney-pot hat, knowing that while I saw that I should not lose John.
Presently there was a stir, for Brighton Bill had landed a tremendous blow on the cheek of Owen Swift, and while we were applauding, as is the custom at prize-fights and public dinners, a cunning pickpocket standing immediately behind John pushed the tall chimney-pot hat tightly down over the boy's eyes.
His little hands, which had been in his pockets, went up in a moment to raise his hat, so that he might see the world, the big object he had come to see; and immediately in went two other hands, and out came the savings of John's life--two precious half-crowns, which he had shown to me with great pride that very morning! When he saw the world again the rogue had disappeared.
The famous place for these pugilistic encounters, or one of the famous places, was a spot called Noon's Folly, which was within a very few miles of Royston, where the counties of Cambridge, Suffolk, Essex, and Hertfordshire meet, or most of them. That was the scene of many a stiff encounter; and although, of course, there were both magisterial and police interference when the knowledge reached them that a fight was about to take place within their particular jurisdiction, by some singular misadventure the knowledge never reached them until their worships were returning from the battle. All was over before any official communication was made.
* * * * *
I was entered of the Middle Temple on April 16, 1839, and remained with Mr. Butt until I had kept sufficient terms to qualify me to take out a licence to plead on my own account, which I did at the earliest possible date. This was a great step in my career, although, of course, the licence did not enable me to plead in court, as I was not called to the Bar.
If work came I should now be in a fair way to attain independence. But the prospect was by no means flattering; it was, in fact, all but hopeless while the position of a special pleader was not my ambition. The lookout, in fact, was anything but encouraging from the fifth floor of _No. 3 Elm Court_--I mean prospectively. It was a region not inaccessible, of course, but it looked on to a landscape of chimney-pots, not one of which was likely to attract attorneys; it was cheap and lonely, dull and miserable--a melancholy altitude beyond the world and its companionship. Had I been of a melancholy disposition I might have gone mad, for hope surely never came to a fifth floor. But there I sat day by day, week by week, and month by month, waiting for the knock that never came, hoping for the business that might never come.
Hundreds of times did I listen with vain expectations to the footsteps on the stairs below--footsteps of attorneys and clerks, messengers and office-boys. I knew them all, and that was all I knew of them. Down below at the bottom flight they tramped, and there they mostly stopped. The ground floor was evidently the best for business; but some came higher, to the first floor. That was a good position; there were plenty of footsteps, and I could tell they were the footsteps of clients. A few came a little higher still, and then my hopes rose with the footsteps. Now some one had come up to the third floor: he stopped! Alas! there was the knock, one single hard knock: it was a junior clerk. The sound came all too soon for me, and I turned from my own door to my little den and looked out of my window up into the sky, from whence it seemed I might just as well expect a brief as from the regions below.
This was not quite true. On another occasion some bold adventurer ascended with asthmatical energy to the fourth floor, and I thought as I heard him wheeze he would never have breath enough to get down again, and wondered if the good-natured attorneys kept these wheezy old gentlemen out of charity. But it was rare indeed that the climber, unless it was the rent collector, reached that floor.
The fifth landing was too remote for the postman, for I never got a letter--at least so it seemed; and no squirrel watching from the topmost bough of the tallest pine could be more lonely than I.
At last I thought a step had passed even the fourth landing, and was approaching mine; but I would not think too fast, and damped my hopes a little on purpose lest they should burn too brightly and too fast. I