this Jacob's ladder called
"the Master" to the higher regions called the Court of Appeal. The
simplest possible matter, which any old laundress of the Temple ought to
have been competent to decide by giving both the parties a box on the
ear, was taken before the Master, from the Master to the Judge, from the
Judge to the Divisional Court, and from the Divisional Court to the Court
of Appeal, at the expense of the unfortunate litigants; while Judges, who
ought to have been engaged in disposing of the business of the country,
were occupied in deciding legal quibbles and miserable technicalities.
All this I saw in my dream. Up and down this ladder Bumpkin and Snooks
were driven--one going up the front while the other was coming down the
back. And I heard Bumpkin ask if he wasn't entitled to the costs which
the Court gave when he won. But the answer of Mr. Prigg was, "No, my
dear sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire." And I saw a great many
more ups and downs on the ladder which I should weary the reader by
repeating: they are all alike equally useless and equally contemptible.
Then I thought that poor Bumpkin went up the ladder with a great bundle
on his back; and his face seemed quite changed, so that I hardly knew
him, and I said to Horatio, the pale boy--

"Who is that going up now? It looks like Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress."

"Oh, no," said Horatio, "that's old Bumpkin--it's a regler sweater for
him, ain't it?"

I said, "Whatever can it be? will he ever reach the top?"

Here Bumpkin seemed to slip, and it almost took my breath away; whereat
the pale boy laughed, stooping down as he laughed, and thrusting his
hands into his breeches pockets,

"By George!" he exclaimed, "what a jolly lark!"

"I hope he won't fall," I exclaimed. "What has he got on his back?"

"A DEMURRER," said Horatio, laughing. "Look at him! That there ladder's
the Judicatur Act: don't it reach a height? There's as many rounds in
that there ladder as would take a man a lifetime to go up if it was all
spread out; it's just like them fire escapes in reaching up, but nobody
ever escapes by it."

"It will break the poor man's back," said I, as he was a few feet from
the top. And then in my dream I thought he fell; and the fright was so
great that I awoke, and found I was sitting in my easy chair by the fire,
and the pipe I had been smoking had fallen out of my hand.

* * * * *

"You've been