Charles Dickens

The Battle of Life Charles Dickens

SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS had a snug little office on the old Battle Ground, where they drove asnug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great manycontending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they wererunning fights-for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace-the part the Firmhad in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at thisPlaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate inChancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette wasan important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as in fields of greater renown;and in most of the Actions wherein they showed their generalship, it was afterwardsobserved by the combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other out, orin knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence of thevast amount of smoke by which they were surrounded. The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient, with an open door down twosmooth steps, in the market-place; so that any angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was anold back-room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its browsgloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished with some highbacked leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which, every hereand there, two or three had fallen out-or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wanderingthumbs and forefingers of bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge init, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man's hair stand on end. Bales of papersfilled the dusty closets, shelves, and tables; and round the wainscot there were tiers ofboxes, padlocked and fireproof, with people's names painted outside, which anxiousvisitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, withoutcomprehending one word of what they sa