The reciter, who wore an air that bespoke him of the country, was here addressed by a metropolitan gentleman seated in his vicinity, who announced himself as a brother initialist, A. G. K. "Well, sir, Simon Simpson, 'fresh from town,' was not more awkwardly situated than I once was, in this very lane here, when fresh from the country. You see the vehicle has just turned out of Fleet Street, and is making for Holborn; so if you like to listen, I'll give you my impressions on first finding myself in
"I meditated the desperate design of hastening to Holborn by the first street which led thither; a desperate design, indeed, as I knew not the street through which I should have to pass. As ill-luck would have it, "Chancery Lane" was the first that offered, and well does it deserve the name; dark, narrow, crooked, long, and tedious is this Elysium of the Law! On every side I beheld long and careworn faces, and, as is generally the case with legal suits, I might easily have got through it alone, had I not been prevented by the many passengers, like the numerous little cases put into causes to protract and swell the client's difficulties. Perhaps it may be thought that I could have stepped into the middle of the street, and so have managed to walk on; not so--the vehicles were as numerous nearly as the passengers, and there was no resource but to wait. On this, I began to look around me, to see if I could discover anything that could take away the tedium of stoppage. I gazed on the persons nearest to me; from the youngest to the oldest--from the poorest to the richest, there was the same invariable careworn look.
"First there came the young office-boy, groaning under a large bag of parchment and what not; then the unfortunate articled clerk, desponding at the idea of five years in so gloomy a place, wherein his youth's best years were to be spent. The needy clerks, who received a stipend, came next; their little all had, with the characteristic theatrical mania of lawyers' clerks, vanished the night previous at the Adelphi, or adjacent tavern. But not alone did these wear a look of gloom: the fishermen, the snarers, even the attorneys themselves, looked vexed; the stoppage of the way teased them sadly. It was five minutes past the time when that little bony wretch, the office boy, should have been screwed down to his comfortless stool, far from the apparition of a fire, from the phantom of heat! Last of all came the client: it will easily be surmised why he looked gloomy.