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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
‘GRAND DAY.’
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OF THE WHALE.
MR PUDSTER’S RETURN.
SUDDEN RUIN.
BACK FROM ‘ELDORADO.’
STEEL.
THE STRAY BLOSSOM.
No. 36.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1884.
‘GRAND DAY.’
To the majority of people, the surroundings ofthe legal profession, to say nothing of the lawitself, are subjects fraught with no inconsiderableamount of the mysterious. For instance,what a variety of conceptions have been formedby the uninitiated with respect to one ceremonyalone connected with the ‘upper branch’ of thelegal profession; we mean that known as ‘Callto the Bar.’ The very expression itself has oftenproved a puzzle to the lay outsider, and perhapsnot unnaturally, because there can be nodoubt that it is one of those out-of-the-wayphrases the signification of which sets anythinglike mere conjecture on that point at defiance.There is a hazy notion abroad that ‘Call to theBar’ involves proceedings of a somewhat imposingcharacter, especially as there is just a smack ofthe grandiloquent about the term. Accordingly,it may be disappointing to many persons tolearn that, in the first place, there is no ‘calling’at all connected with the ceremony, except thecalling over the names of the gentlemen whopresent themselves for admission to the professionknown as the Bar. And in the next place, itmay be a little surprising to learn that there isno semblance even of a ‘bar’ of any descriptionemployed in the performance of the ceremonyalluded to.
Again, people appear to have a somewhatindistinct notion about legal festivities, the traditionalfun of a circuit mess, the precise sharewhich ‘eating dinners’ has in qualifying a studentfor the Bar, and so forth. Often, too, they wonderhow it is that men addicted to such grave pursuitsas those followed by the working members of theBar, are so much given to mirth and jollity andcostly festivity. The answer to this is that, justin proportion to the mental tension superinducedby the demands of their calling, is the recoil oftheir minds in an exactly opposite direction afterthat tension.
Well, then, assuming that barristers are notonly a learned and laborious but also at suitabletimes a convivial body of men, we will endeavourto describe the proceedings in the Hall of anInn of Court on the evening of a day whenbarristerial conviviality