There was a hand bill tacked on the wall, which at first offered
hilarious suggestions of a circus or a steamboat excursion, but which
turned out only to be a sheriff's sale. There were several oddly-shaped
packages in newspaper wrappings, mysterious and awful in dark corners,
that might have contained forgotten law papers or the previous week's
washing of the eminent counsel. There were one or two newspapers, which
at first offered entertaining prospects to the waiting client, but
always proved to be a law record or a Supreme Court decision. There was
the bust of a late distinguished jurist, which apparently had never been
dusted since he himself became dust, and had already grown a perceptibly
dusty moustache on his severely-judicial upper lip. It was a cheerless
place in the sunshine of day; at night, when it ought, by every
suggestion of its dusty past, to have been left to the vengeful ghosts,
the greater part of whose hopes and passions were recorded and gathered
there; when in the dark the dead hands of forgotten men were stretched
from their dusty graves to fumble once more for their old title deeds;
at night, when it was lit up by flaring gaslight, the hollow mockery
of this dissipation was so apparent that people in the streets, looking
through the illuminated windows, felt as if the privacy of a family
vault had been intruded upon by body-snatchers.
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