There are a number of other interesting functionaries on the way to the Bear-Garden; but we must get on. When you have wandered about in the purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous noise, a sort of combined snarling and roaring and legal conversation. When you hear that you will know that you are very near the bears. They are all snarling and roaring in a large preliminary arena, where the bears prepare themselves for the struggle; all round it are smaller cages or arenæ, where the struggle takes place. If possible, you ought to go early so that you can watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, 1.30 to 2. This accounts, perhaps, for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry in in a frenzy up the back stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and down in a frenzy till the time comes. There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors’ clerks, and they all come straight out of Dickens. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors’ clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of moustache that tells you when it is going to rain. While they are pacing up and down the arena they all try to get rid of these moustaches by pulling violently at alternate ends; but the only result is to make it look more like rain than ever. Some of the bears are robust old bears, with well-kept coats and loud roars; these are solicitors’ clerks too, only better-fed; or else they are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young creatures--in barrister’s robes--either for the first time--when they look very self-conscious--or for the second time--when they look very self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases. They are saying, “We are a deceased wife’s sister suing _in forma pauperis_,” or, I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury, but I am claiming damages under the Diseases of Pigs Act, 1862,” or “You are the crew of a merchant ship and we are the editor of a newspaper----” Just at first it is rather disturbing to hear snatches of conversation like that, but there is no real cause for alarm; they are only identifying themselves with the interests of their clients, and when one realizes that one is a little touched.