It is one of those nooks, the
turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the
relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears,
and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a
few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to
one another, 'Let us play at country,' and where a few feet of
garden-mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that
refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is
one of those nooks which are legal nooks; and it contains a little
Hall, with a little lantern in its roof: to what obstructive
purposes devoted, and at whose expense, this history knoweth not.
In the days when Cloisterham took offence at the existence of a
railroad afar off, as menacing that sensitive constitution, the
property of us Britons: the odd fortune of which sacred
institution it is to be in exactly equal degrees croaked about,
trembled for, and boasted of, whatever happens to anything,
anywhere in the world: in those days no neighbouring architecture
of lofty proportions had arisen to overshadow Staple Inn. The
westering sun bestowed bright glances on it, and the south-west
wind blew into it unimpeded.
Neither wind nor sun, however, favoured Staple Inn one December
afternoon towards six o'clock, when it was filled with fog, and
candles shed murky and blurred rays through the windows of all its
then-occupied sets of chambers; notably from a set of chambers in a
corner house in the little inner quadrangle, presenting in black
and white over its ugly portal the mysterious inscription:
P
J T
1747
In which set of chambers, never having troubled his head about the
inscription, unless to bethink himself at odd times on glancing up
at it, that haply it might mean Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe
Tyler, sat Mr.
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