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Bleak House

By CHARLES DICKENS Condensation by WILDER DWIGHT QUINT THE celebrated case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce had droned its way through the dusty, musty Chancery Court in London for how many long years only a few bewigged and fuzzy barristers knew before I, Esther Summerson, came to feel something of its deadening touch. This scarecrow of a suit had become so complicated that no man alive knew what it meant. It was once about an old Jarndyce will, but was now only a question of costs, and they were eating up the original property every day. People were dragged into it whether they would or no. More than one tragedy it had occasioned. I was told that Tom Jarndyce, a despairing suitor, had said one day of Chancery: "It's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains." And then he went and shot himself. But Chancery brought me many strange experiences, some bitter sorrows, and a great happiness.