mislead and delude any
third parties into whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first:
"Garraways, twelve o'clock. Dear Mrs. B.--Chops and tomato sauce. Yours,
PICKWICK." Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce.
Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! and tomato sauce! Gentlemen,
is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away,
by such shallow artifices as these? The next has no date whatever, which
is in itself suspicious. "Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home
till to-morrow. Slow coach." And then follows this very remarkable
expression. "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan." The
warming-pan! Why, gentlemen, who DOES trouble himself about a
warming-pan? When was the peace of mind of man or woman broken or
disturbed by a warming-pan, which is in itself a harmless, a useful, and
I will add, gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic furniture? Why
is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly entreated not to agitate herself about this
warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere cover for
hidden fire--a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise,
agreeably to a preconcerted system of correspondence, artfully contrived
by Pickwick with a view to his contemplated desertion, and which I am
not in a condition to explain? And what does this allusion to the slow
coach mean? For aught I know, it may be a reference to Pickwick himself,
who has most unquestionably been a criminally slow coach during the
whole of this transaction, but whose speed will now be very unexpectedly
accelerated, and whose wheels, gentlemen, as he will find to his cost,
will very soon be greased by you!'

Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz paused in this place, to see whether the jury
smiled at his joke; but as nobody took it but the greengrocer, whose
sensitiveness on the subject was very probably occasioned by his having
subjected a chaise-cart to the process in question on that identical
morning, the learned Serjeant considered it advisable to undergo a
slight relapse into the dismals before he concluded.

'But enough of this, gentlemen,' said Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, 'it is
difficult to smile with an aching heart; it is ill jesting when our
deepest sympathies are awakened. My client's hopes and prospects are
ruined, and it is no figure of speech to say that her occupation is
gone indeed. The bill is down--but there is no tenant. Eligible single
gentlemen pass and repass-but there is no invitation for to in