visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would
be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common
impropriety of which married ladies are guilty,--of treating us as if
we were their husbands, and _vice versa_. I mean, when they use us
with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. _Testacea_, for
instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual
time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. ---- did not come
home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to
take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to
be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some
other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in
little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to
deny in the greater. Had _Testacea_ kept the oysters back for me, and
withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have
acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony
that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point
of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of _Cerasia_, who at her own table sent away a
dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good will, to her
husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of
less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead.
Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of ----.

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman
denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise
to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all
such desperate offenders in future.

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I picked up the other
day--I know not by what chance it was preserved so long--tempts me to
call to mind a few of the Players, who make the principal figure in
it. It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth Night, at the old
Drury-lane Theatre two-and-thirty years ago. There is something very
touching in these old remembrances. They make us think how we _once_
used to read a Play Bill--not, as now peradventure, singling out a
favorite performer, and casting a negligent eye over the rest; but
spelling out every