Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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"What is this business, Mr. Tuggeridge?" cried Tagrag (who was the only one of our party
that had his senses). "What is this will?"
"Oh, it's merely a matter of form," said the lawyer, riding up. "For heaven's sake, madam,
be peaceable; let my friends, Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick, arrange with me. I am
surprised that none of their people are here. All that you have to do is to eject us; and the
rest will follow, of course."
"Who has taken possession of this here property?" roars Jemmy, again.
"My friend Mr. Scapgoat," said the lawyer.—Mr. Scapgoat grinned.
"Mr. Scapgoat," said my wife, shaking her fist at him (for she is a woman of no small
spirit), "if you don't leave this ground I'll have you pushed out with pitchforks, I will—you
and your beggarly blackamoor yonder." And, suiting the action to the word, she clapped a
stable fork into the hands of one of the gardeners, and called another, armed with a rake, to
his help, while young Tug set the dog at their heels, and I hurrahed for joy to see such
villany so properly treated.
"That's sufficient, ain't it?" said Mr. Scapgoat, with the calmest air in the world. "Oh,
completely," said the lawyer. "Mr. Tuggeridge, we've ten miles to dinner. Madam, your
very humble servant." And the whole posse of them rode away.
LAW LIFE ASSURANCE.
We knew not what this meant, until we received a strange document from Higgs, in
London—which begun, "Middlesex to wit. Samuel Cox, late of Portland Place, in the city
of Westminster, in the said county, was attached to answer Samuel Scapgoat, of a plea,
wherefore, with force and arms, he entered into one messuage, with the appurtenances,
which John Tuggeridge, Esq., demised to the said Samuel Scapgoat, for a term which is not
yet expired, and ejected him." And it went on to say that "we, with force of arms, viz, with
swords, knives, and staves, had ejected him." Was there ever such a monstrous falsehood?
when we did but stand in defence of our own; and isn't it a sin that we should have been
turned out of our rightful possessions upon such a rascally plea?
Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick had evidently been bribed; for would you believe it?—they
told us to give up possession at once, as a will was found, and we could not defend the
action. My Jemmy refused their proposal with scorn, and laughed at the notion of the will:
she pronounced it to be a forgery, a vile blackamoor forgery; and believes, to this day, that
the story of its having been made thirty years ago, in Calcutta, and left there with old Tug's
papers, and found there, and brought to England, after a search made by order of
Tuggeridge junior, is a scandalous falsehood.