tareleigh's temper bordered on the
irritable, and brooked not contradiction.

'I know I _ought_ to do, if I got on as well as I deserved, but I
don't, my Lord,' answered the chemist.

'Swear the gentleman,' said the judge, peremptorily.

The officer had got no farther than the 'You shall well and truly
try,' when he was again interrupted by the chemist.

'I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I?' said the chemist.

'Certainly, sir,' replied the testy little judge.

'Very well, my Lord,' replied the chemist in a resigned manner.
'There'll be murder before this trial's over; that's all. Swear me,
if you please, sir;' and sworn the chemist was, before the judge
could find words to utter.

'I merely wanted to observe, my Lord,' said the chemist, taking his
seat with great deliberation, 'that I've left nobody but an errand
boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my Lord, but he is not
acquainted with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression on
his mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid; and syrup of senna,
laudanum. That's all, my Lord.' With this, the tall chemist
composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a
pleasant expression of countenance, appeared to have prepared himself
for the worst.

One who was born in the same year as Boz, but who was to live for thirty
years after him, Henry Russell--composer and singer of "The Ivy
Green"--was, when a youth, apprenticed to a chemist, and when about ten
years old, that is five years before Bardell _v._ Pickwick, was left in
charge of the shop. He discovered just in time that he had served a
customer who had asked for Epsom salts with poison sufficient to kill
fifty people. On this he gave up the profession. I have little doubt
that he told this story to his friend a dozen years later, and that it
was on Boz's mind when he wrote. Epsom salts was the drug mentioned in
both instances.

It must be said that even in our day a defendant for Breach, with Mr.
Pickwick's story and surroundings, would have had small chance with a
city jury. They saw before them a benevolent-looking Lothario, of a
Quaker-like air, while all the witnesses against him were his three most
intimate friends and his own man.

We have, of course, testy judges now, who may be "short" in manner, but I
think it can be affirmed that no judge of our day could behave to counsel
or witnesses as Mr