But my friend the advocate, who had daily, with mingled feelings, to
read the drafts of my work, found my process-paper so good that he hoped
it might raise me into the 'Laud' list. And he did not wish me to suffer
the injury and annoyance of being plucked in the _vivâ voce_
examination, for he knew me and was my friend.

But the monkey was really a coffee-stain on the margin of page 496 of
Schweigaard's Process, which I had borrowed from my friend Cucumis.

Going up to a law examination in slush and semi-darkness in mid-winter
is one of the saddest experiences that a man can have. It may, indeed,
be even worse in summer; but this I have not tried.

One rushes through these eleven papers (or is it thirteen?--it is
certainly the most infamous number that the college authorities have
been able to devise)--like an unhappy _débutant_ in a circus. He stands
on the back of a galloping horse, with his life in his hands and a silly
circus smile on his lips; and so he must leap eleven (or is it
thirteen?) times through one of these confounded paper-covered hoops.

The unhappy mortal who passes--or tries to pass--his law examination,
finds himself in precisely the same situation, only he does not gallop
round a ring, under brilliant gaslight, to the music of a full band. He
sits upon a hard chair in semi-darkness with his face to the wall, and
the only sound he hears is the creaking of the inspectors' boots. For in
all the wide, wide world there are no such creaky boots as those of law
examination inspectors.

And so comes the dreadful moment when the black-robed tormentor from the