f some of those individuals who
have quitted the town for six months?

Some of those worthy Snobs are making-believe to go yachting, and,
dressed in telescopes and pea-jackets, are passing their time between
Cherbourg and Cowes; some living higgledy-piggledy in dismal little
huts in Scotland, provisioned with canisters of portable soup,
and fricandeaux hermetically sealed in tin, are passing their days
slaughtering grouse upon the moors; some are dozing and bathing away the
effects of the season at Kissingen, or watching the ingenious game of
TRENTE ET QUARANTE at Homburg and Ems. We can afford to be very bitter
upon them now they are all gone. Now there are no more parties, let us
have at the Party-giving Snobs. The dinner-giving, the ball-giving, the
DEJEUNER-giving, the CONVERSAZIONE-GIVING Snobs--Lord! Lord! what
havoc might have been made amongst them had we attacked them during the
plethora of the season! I should have been obliged to have a guard to
defend me from fiddlers and pastrycooks, indignant at the abuse of
their patrons. Already I'm told that, from some flippant and unguarded
expressions considered derogatory to Baker Street and Harley Street,
rents have fallen in these respectable quarters; and orders have been
issued that at least Mr. Snob shall be asked to parties there no more.
Well, then--now they are ALL away, let us frisk at our ease, and have at
everything like the bull in the china-shop. They mayn't hear of what is
going on in their absence, and, if they do they can't bear malice for
six months. We will begin to make it up with them about next February,
and let next year take care of itself. We shall have no dinners from
the dinner-giving Snobs: no more from the ball-givers: no more
CONVERSAZIONES (thank Mussy! as Jeames says,) from the Conversaziones
Snob: and what is to prevent us from telling the truth?

The snobbishness of Conversazione Snobs is very soon disposed of: as
soon as that cup of washy bohea is handed to you in the tea-room; or the
muddy remnant of ice that you grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the
assembly upstairs.

Good heavens! What do people mean by going there? What is done there,
that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the Black Hole
considered to be an agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here
seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where
you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces,
and ge