There is another factor which can hardly be left out, when considering Mr. Pickwick's responsibility--that is, his too frequent indulgence in liquor, and the insufficiency of his head to stand its influence. Now this was a very important day for him, the first time he was to set up a man servant. He had to break it to his landlady, who would naturally resent the change. He may have been _priming_ himself with some of those perpetual glasses of brandy and water to which he was addicted, and who knows but that, in his ardour to propitiate, he may have gone a _little_ too far? This fact too, of the introducing a man servant into her establishment, Mrs. Bardell may have indistinctly associated with a general change in his life. If she were to become Mrs. Pickwick her duties might be naturally expected to devolve on a male assistant. Next morning he and his friends quitted London on their travels to Eatanswill in pursuit of adventure. He airily dismissed the matter. We may wonder whether he made any remonstrance to his landlady before his departure. Probably he did not, fancying that she had been merely in a slight fit of the "tantrums." At Bury, however, after the boarding-school adventure, he was to be painfully awakened. He was sitting with his friends after dinner at the "Angel," in his happiest mood. Winkle had related his quarrel with Pott _in re_ Mrs. Pott, in a humorous fashion when one of the most delightful of humorous scenes followed. Mr. Pickwick was proceeding with his scathing rebuke, when Sam enters with a letter. 'I don't know this hand,' said Mr. Pickwick, opening the letter. 'Mercy on us! what's this? It must be a jest; it--it--can't be true.' 'What's the matter?' was the general inquiry. 'Nobody dead, is there?' said Wardle, alarmed at the horror in Mr. Pickwick's countenance. Mr. Pickwick made no reply, but, pushing the letter across the table, and desiring Mr. Tupman to read it aloud, fell back in his chair with a look of vacant astonishment quite alarming to behold. Mr. Tupman, with a trembling voice, read the letter, of which the following is a copy:-- '_Freeman's Court_, _Cornhill_, _August_ 28_th_, 1827. _Bardell against Pickwick_. _Sir_, _Having been instructed by Mrs. Martha Bardell to commence an action against you for a breach of promise of marriage_, _for which the plaintiff lays her damages at fifteen hundred pounds_, _we beg to inform you that a writ has been issued against you in this suit in the Court of Common Pleas_; _and request to know_, _by return of post_, _the name of your attorney in London_, _who will accept service thereof_.