hard-working soldiers for anything they take the
pains to announce to the contrary!

Ah! here is a family just come in who recognise the flaxen-headed young
gentleman; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman recognises them too,
only he doesn't care to show it just now. Very well done indeed! He
talks louder to the little group of military young gentlemen who are
standing by him, and coughs to induce some ladies in the next box but one
to look round, in order that their faces may undergo the same ordeal of
criticism to which they have subjected, in not a wholly inaudible tone,
the majority of the female portion of the audience. Oh! a gentleman in
the same box looks round as if he were disposed to resent this as an
impertinence; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman sees his friends at
once, and hurries away to them with the most charming cordiality.

Three young ladies, one young man, and the mamma of the party, receive
the military young gentleman with great warmth and politeness, and in
five minutes afterwards the military young gentleman, stimulated by the
mamma, introduces the two other military young gentlemen with whom he was
walking in the morning, who take their seats behind the young ladies and
commence conversation; whereat the mamma bestows a triumphant bow upon a
rival mamma, who has not succeeded in decoying any military young
gentlemen, and prepares to consider her visitors from that moment three
of the most elegant and superior young gentlemen in the whole world.

THE POLITICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN

Once upon a time--_not_ in the days when pigs drank wine, but in a more
recent period of our history--it was customary to banish politics when
ladies were present. If this usage still prevailed, we should have had
no chapter for political young gentlemen, for ladies would have neither
known nor cared what kind of monster a political young gentleman was.
But as this good custom in common with many others has 'gone out,' and
left no word when it is likely to be home again; as political young
ladies are by no means rare, and political young gentlemen the very
reverse of scarce, we are bound in the strict discharge of our most
responsible duty not to neglect this natural division of our subject.

If the political young gentleman be resident in a country town (and there
_are_ political young gentlemen in country towns sometimes), he is wholly
absorbed in his politics; as a pair of purple spectacles communicat