at splendid woman--that lady of
illustrious family and immense fortune, Mary, you know, whom he wrote
the beautiful verses about. She's five-and-forty. She's red hair. She's
a nose like a pump-handle. Her father made his fortune by keeping a
ham-and-beef shop, and Wiggle's going to marry her next week.'

'So much the better, Waggle, my young friend,' I exclaimed. 'Better
for the sake of womankind that this dangerous dog should leave off
lady-killing--this Blue-Beard give up practice. Or, better rather
for his own sake. For as there is not a word of truth in any of those
prodigious love-stories which you used to swallow, nobody has been
hurt except Wiggle himself, whose affections will now centre in the
ham-and-beef shop. There ARE people, Mr. Waggle, who do these things
in earnest, and hold a good rank in the world too. But these are not
subjects for ridicule, and though certainly Snobs, are scoundrels
likewise. Their cases go up to a higher Court.'

CHAPTER XLI--CLUB SNOBS

Bacchus is the divinity to whom Waggle devotes his especial worship.
'Give me wine, my boy,' says he to his friend Wiggle, who is prating
about lovely woman; and holds up his glass full of the rosy fluid, and
winks at it portentously, and sips it, and smacks his lips after it, and
meditates on it, as if he were the greatest of connoisseurs.

I have remarked this excessive wine-amateurship especially in youth.
Snoblings from college, Fledglings from the army, Goslings from the
public schools, who ornament our Clubs, are frequently to be heard in
great force upon wine questions. 'This bottle's corked,' says Snobling;
and Mr. Sly, the butler, taking it away, returns presently with the same
wine in another jug, which the young amateur pronounces excellent. 'Hang
champagne!' says Fledgling, 'it's only fit for gals and children.
Give me pale sherry at dinner, and my twenty-three claret afterwards.'
'What's port now?' says Gosling; 'disgusting thick sweet stuff--where's
the old dry wine one USED to get?' Until the last twelvemonth, Fledgling
drank small-beer at Doctor Swishtail's; and Gosling used to get his dry
old port at a gin-shop in Westminster--till he quitted that seminary, in
1844.

Anybody who has looked at the caricatures of thirty years ago,
must remember how frequently bottle-noses, pimpled faces, and other
Bardolphian features are introduced by the designer. They are much more
rare now (in nature, and in pictures, therefore,) than in