The Serjeant's dealing with the warming pan topic is a truly admirable satiric touch, and not one bit far-fetched or exaggerated. Any one familiar with suspicious actions has again and again heard comments as plausible and as forced. "Don't trouble yourself about the warming pan! The warming pan! Why, gentlemen, who _does_ trouble himself about a warming pen?" A delicious _non sequitur_, sheer nonsense, and yet with an air of conviction that is irresistable. "When was the peace of mind of man or woman broken or disturbed by a warming pan which is in itself a harmless, a useful _and I will add_, _gentlemen_, a comforting article of domestic furniture?" He then goes on ingeniously to suggest that it may be "a cover for hidden fire, a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, _agreeably to a preconcerted system_ of correspondence, artfully contrived by Pickwick _with a view_ to his contemplated desertion and which I am not in a position to explain?" Admirable indeed! One could imagine a city jury in their wisdom thinking that there must be _something_ in this warming pan! Not less amusing and plausible is his dealing with the famous topic of the "chops and tomato sauce," not "tomata" as Boz has it. I suppose there is no popular allusion better understood than this. The very man in the street knows all about it and what it means. Absurd as it may seem, it is hardly an exaggeration. Counsel every day give weight to points just as trivial and expound them elaborately to the jury. The Serjeant's burst of horror is admirable, "Gentlemen, _what does this mean_? 'Chops and tomata sauce! Yours Pickwick!' Chops! Gracious Heavens! What does this mean? Is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away _by such shallow artifices as these_?'" I recall that admirable judge and pleasant man, the late Lord FitzGerald, who was fond of talking of this trial, saying to me that Buzfuz lost a good point here, as he might have dwelt on the mystic meaning of tomato which is the "love apple," that here was the "secret correspondence," the real "cover for hidden fire." He concluded by demanding exemplary damages as "the recompense you can award my client. And for these damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right feeling, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathising, a contemplative jury of her civilized countrymen!" THE PLAINTIFF'S CASE. It was really of a very flimsy kind but "bolstered-up" and carried through by the bluster of the serjeant and the smartness of his junior. It rested first on a dialogue between Mr. Pickwick and his landlady which was overheard, in fact by several persons; second, on a striking situation witnessed by his three friends who entered unexpectedly and surprised him with Mrs. Bardell in his arms; third, on some documentary evidence, and lastly, on a damaging incident disclosed by Winkle.