Somehow, if it rained civil bills or declarations, devil a one would fall upon my head; and it seemed as if the only object I had in life was to accompany the circuit, a kind of deputy-assistant commissary-general, never expected to come into action.
To be sure, I was not alone in misfortune; there were several promising youths, who cut great figures in Trinity, in the same predicament, the only difference being, that they attributed to jealousy what I suspected was forgetfulness, for I don't think a single attorney in Dublin knew one of us.
"Two years passed over, and then I walked the hall with a bag filled with newspapers to look like briefs, and was regularly called by two or three criers from one court to the other.

It never took.

Even when I used to seduce a country friend to visit the courts, and get him into an animated conversation in a corner between two pillars, devil a one would believe him to be a client, and I was fairly nonplussed.
"'How is a man ever to distinguish himself in such a walk as this ?' was my eternal question to myself every morning, as I put on my wig.

'My face is as well known here as Lord Manners's.' Every one says, 'How are you, Dick ?' 'How goes it, Power ?' But except Holmes, that said one morning as he passed me, 'Eh, always busy ?' no one alludes to the possibility of my having anything to do.
"'If I could only get a footing,' thought I, 'Lord, how I'd astonish them! As the song says:-- "Perhaps a recruit Might chance to shoo Great General Buonaparte." So,' said I to myself, 'I'll make these halls ring for it some day or other, if the occasion ever present itself.' But, faith, it seemed as if some cunning solicitor overheard me and told his associates, for they avoided me like a leprosy.

The home circuit I had adopted for some time past, for the very palpable reason that being near town it was least costly, and it had all the advantages of any other for me in getting me nothing to do.