CHAMBERS AT: THE TEMPLE 255 



which was destined to show whether the years spent 

 on education had left me with any valuable qualities 

 to the good. It was at least something to realise one's 

 own ignorance and incapacity, and how the passing of 

 examinations does not for a moment fit you for the rough- 

 and-tumble of life. That much I soon understood ; but 

 real work is very hard indeed for those who have never 

 known what it is to work, except spasmodically, and in 

 getting down to a genuine working groove I found the 

 effort rather bitter. Work came along fairly well quite 

 as well as it does for any extreme junior at the Bar. In 

 those days the Law Courts were at Westminster, and I once 

 held a brief there as junior to Sir Edward Clarke I am 

 sure I forget what it was about, but I know the solicitor 

 was a little old man named Charles Eustace Goldring. 

 Also I had a slice or two of Parliamentary practice on one 

 occasion with Sir Edmund Beckett " Clocky " Denison 

 (the late Lord Grimthorpe) the late Mr Hume Williams, 

 and the late Mr Sylvester. I was the junior of the lot, 

 and had thirty guineas, and five guineas on my brief, 

 with ten guineas refresher each day and five guineas con- 

 sultation. The case was that of the Beverley Water 

 Works, which some infatuated persons opposed, and 

 the proceedings went on five or six days both before 

 the Commons' arid the Lords' Committees. It was the 

 pleasantest, easiest and most remunerative work I had 

 ever done, for instead of having laboriously to take a note 

 of the evidence for your leaders you find all this done 

 by shorthand writers and ready printed next morning. 



More profitable still, however, is a brief in an election 

 petition, and I had experience of that too, when there was 

 a petition against the election of the late Colonel Dawnay 

 for Thirsk. I, of course, was briefed because I knew all 

 the people concerned and could tell my leaders more than 

 the solicitor dared to do in his instructions. 



In point of fact, the late Quintin Rhodes, son of my 

 original old friend, mentioned earlier in this book, had 

 carried the war so far into the enemy's camp that from 



