going out to
stately dinners, and stiff evening-parties; and instead, seek society in
clubs, and cigar-divans, and taverns. "I'm sick of this standing about
in drawing-rooms, talking nonsense, and trying to look happy," will
answer one of them when taxed with his desertion. "Why should I any
longer waste time and money, and temper? Once I was ready enough to rush
home from the office to dress; I sported embroidered shirts, submitted
to tight boots, and cared nothing for tailors' and haberdashers' bills.
I know better now. My patience lasted a good while; for though I found
each night pass stupidly, I always hoped the next would make amends. But
I'm undeceived. Cab-hire and kid gloves cost more than any evening
party pays for; or rather--it is worth the cost of them to avoid the
party. No, no; I'll no more of it. Why should I pay five shillings a
time for the privilege of being bored?"

If, now, we consider that this very common mood tends towards
billiard-rooms, towards long sittings over cigars and brandy-and-water,
towards Evans's and the Coal Hole, towards every place where amusement
may be had; it becomes a question whether these precise observances
which hamper our set meetings, have not to answer for much of the
prevalent dissoluteness. Men must have excitements of some kind or
other; and if debarred from higher ones will fall back upon lower. It is
not that those who thus take to irregular habits are essentially those
of low tastes. Often it is quite the reverse. Among half a dozen
intimate friends, abandoning formalities and sitting at ease round the
fire, none will enter with greater enjoyment into the highest kind of
social intercourse--the genuine communion of thought and feeling; and if
the circle includes women of intelligence and refinement, so much the
greater is their pleasure. It is because they will no longer be choked
with the mere dry husks of conversation which society offers them, that
they fly its assemblies, and seek those with whom they may have
discourse that is at least real, though unpolished. The men who thus
long for substantial mental sympathy, and will go where they can get it,
are often, indeed, much better at the core than the men who are content
with the inanities of gloved and scented party-goers--men who feel no
need to come morally nearer to their fellow creatures than they can come
while standing, tea-cup in hand, answering trifles with trifles; and
who, by feeling no such need, p