While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially
drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and
hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front
place for half a crown, whence I should command a full view of the
Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes,--mentioning that awful
personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced
price of eighteen-pence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of
an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show
me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly
whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which
culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest of that
dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em" would
come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the
morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a
sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's
proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his
pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had
evidently not belonged to him originally, and which I took it into
my head he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under these
circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a shilling.
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