eypenny always calls me the Queen of the Hearts)--and that
Zenobia, as well as Psyche, is good Greek, and that my father was "a
Greek," and that consequently I have a right to our patronymic, which is
Zenobia and not by any means Snobbs. Nobody but Tabitha Turnip calls me
Suky Snobbs. I am the Signora Psyche Zenobia.
As I said before, everybody has heard of me. I am that very Signora
Psyche Zenobia, so justly celebrated as corresponding secretary to the
"Philadelphia, Regular, Exchange, Tea, Total, Young, Belles, Lettres,
Universal, Experimental, Bibliographical, Association, To, Civilize,
Humanity." Dr. Moneypenny made the title for us, and says he chose it
because it sounded big like an empty rum-puncheon. (A vulgar man that
sometimes--but he's deep.) We all sign the initials of the society after
our names, in the fashion of the R. S. A., Royal Society of Arts--the
S. D. U. K., Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, &c, &c. Dr.
Moneypenny says that S. stands for stale, and that D. U. K. spells duck,
(but it don't,) that S. D. U. K. stands for Stale Duck and not for Lord
Brougham's society--but then Dr. Moneypenny is such a queer man that I
am never sure when he is telling me the truth. At any rate we always
add to our names the initials P. R. E. T. T. Y. B. L. U. E. B. A. T. C.
H.--that is to say, Philadelphia, Regular, Exchange, Tea, Total, Young,
Belles, Lettres, Universal, Experimental, Bibliographical, Association,
To, Civilize, Humanity--one letter for each word, which is a decided
improvement upon Lord Brougham. Dr. Moneypenny will have it that our
initials give our true character--but for my life I can't see what he
means.
Notwithstanding the good offices of the Doctor, and the strenuous
exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no
very great success until I joined it. The truth is, the members indulged
in too flippant a tone of discussion. The papers read every Saturday
evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery. They were
all whipped syllabub. There was no investigation of first causes, first
principles. There was no investigation of any thing at all. There was
no attention paid to that great point, the "fitness of things." In
short there was no fine writing like this. It was all low--very! No
profundity, no reading, no metaphysics--nothing which the learned call
spirituality, and which the unlearned choose to stigmatize as cant. [Dr.
M. says I ought to spell
|