Charles Dickens

“ I bowed my acknowledgments, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal. That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.
"Oh surely! surely!" said Mr. Spenlow. "We always, in this house, propose a month—an initiatory month. ”

“ Crupp in confidence. "And smoke."
"Smoke? You don't mean chimneys?" said my aunt.
"No, ma'am," returned Mrs. Crupp. "Cigars and pipes."
"That's not catching, Trot, at any rate," remarked my aunt, turning to me.
"No, indeed," said I.
In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that she should always yearn towards me as a son. ”

“ To tell you the truth, I am afraid I had forgotten it."
"Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence," said Steerforth. "Look to the right, and you'll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you'll see the same. Look to the front, and you'll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still."
I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.
"What says our aunt on the subject?" inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. ”

“ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. "If there is any donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another's, that," said my aunt, striking the table, "is the animal!"
Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand and gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn't hear of it. ”

“ But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.
"I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar," said my aunt, "and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don't believe it. Nothing's genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt."
"Don't you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?" I hinted.
"Certainly not," returned my aunt. "It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was." ”

“ They are like actors: now a man's a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he's one thing, now he's another; now he's something else, change and change about; but it's always a very pleasant profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience."
"But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?" said I, a little puzzled. "Are they?"
"No," returned Steerforth, "the advocates are civilians—men who have taken a doctor's degree at college—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. ”

“ My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:
"Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. ”

“ It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among ships and boats."
"Nonsense, Steerforth!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?"
"I don't, indeed, my dear boy," he returned; "but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors' Commons. ”

“ Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.
Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors' names upon the doors, to be the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told me ”

“ Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right it should be so expended? ”

“ But I found out afterwards that he was a mild man, of a heavy temperament, whose place in the business was to keep himself in the back-ground, and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. ”

“ The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors' Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that's any satisfaction."
I made allowance for Steerforth's light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that "lazy old nook near St. Paul's Churchyard," did not feel indisposed towards my aunt's suggestion ”

“ Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors' Commons."
I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter) , and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night. ”

“ It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. ”

“ At about mid-day, we set out for the offices of Messrs. Spenlow and Jorkins in Doctors' Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some silver. ”

“ She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little while. ”