something pleasant, I think, in
stupid family stories: they are good-hearted people who tell them.

As for Mrs. Muchit, nothing need be said of her; she is Pash's
companion; she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace. Nor does my
Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She
calls her "poor Muchit," and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs.
Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater,
who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never
spoke a word to poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to
help her to anything on the table.

In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to
know before you have been very long in his company; and, like most army
surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and conversation,
than the combatant part of the forces. He has adopted the
sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in veterans;
and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in existence, speaks
slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two occasionally, as it is
said a certain great captain does. Besides the above, we sat down to
table with Captain Goff, late of the ---- Highlanders; the Reverend
Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St. Germains; little Cutler, and the
Frenchman, who always WILL be at English parties on the Continent, and
who, after making some frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and
is heard no more. Young married ladies and heads of families generally
have him for the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his
friends of the club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a
charmante Anglaise. Listen to me, all family men who read this! and
never LET AN UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is
worth the price of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case
out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our
Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning
rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of
the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed
moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and stays and goggling eyes,
and hear how they talk of a good simple giddy vain dull Baker
Street creature, and canvass her points, and show her letters, and
insinuate--never mind, but I tell you my soul grows angry when I think
of the same; and I can't hear of an Englishwoman marryi