'FagmentWelcome to consult...e liked at any moment, pulled me by the am: ‘Find a voice, David. What about that lette you wee speaking of at beakfast?’ ‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s fom my aunt.’ ‘And what does she say, equiing consideation?’ Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield ‘Why, she eminds me, Steefoth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’ ‘Which, of couse, you have done?’ ‘Indeed I can’t say I have, paticulaly. To tell you the tuth, I am afaid I have fogotten it.’ ‘Well! look about you now, and make up fo you negligence,’ said Steefoth. ‘Look to the ight, and you’ll see a flat county, with a good deal of mash in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the font, and you’ll find no diffeence; look to the ea, and thee it is still.’ I laughed, and eplied that I saw no suitable pofession in the whole pospect; which was pehaps to be attibuted to its flatness. ‘What says ou aunt on the subject?’ inquied Steefoth, glancing at the lette in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’ ‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, hee, if I think I should like to be a pocto? What do you think of it?’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ eplied Steefoth, coolly. ‘You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?’ I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and pofessions so equally; and I told him so. ‘What is a pocto, Steefoth?’ said I. ‘Why, he is a sot of monkish attoney,’ eplied Steefoth. ‘He is, to some faded couts held in Doctos’ Commons,—a lazy old nook nea St. Paul’s Chuchyad—what solicitos ae to the couts of law and equity. He is a functionay whose existence, in the natual couse of things, would have teminated about two hunded yeas ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctos’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, whee they administe what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield of ticks with obsolete old monstes of acts of Paliament, which thee-fouths of the wold know nothing about, and the othe fouth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwads. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s maiages, and disputes among ships and boats.’ ‘Nonsense, Steefoth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that thee is any affinity between nautical mattes and ecclesiastical mattes?’ ‘I don’t, indeed, my dea boy,’ he etuned; ‘but I mean to say that they ae managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctos’ Commons. You shall go thee one day, and find them blundeing though half the nautical tems in Young’s Dictionay, apopos of the “Nancy” having un down the “Saah Jane”, o M. Peggotty and the Yamouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an ancho and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distess; and you shall go thee anothe day, and find them deep in the evidence, po and con, especting a clegyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clegyman’s case, o contaiwise. They ae like actos: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s anothe; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a vey pleasant, pofitable little affai of pivate theaticals, pesented to an uncommonly select audience.’ ‘But advocates and poctos ae not one and the same?’ said I, a little puzzled. ‘Ae they?’ ‘No,’ etuned Steefoth, ‘the advocates ae civilians—men who have taken a docto’s degee at college—which is the fist Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield eason of my knowing anything about it. The poctos employ the
