Linchpin--son of Lord Splinterbars--best gentleman coachman in
England.'

So Puffington sauntered along, good morninging 'Sir Harrys' and 'Sir
Jameses,' and 'Lord Johns' and 'Lord Toms,' till, seeing a batch of
irreproachable dandies flattening their noses against the windows of the
Sailors' Old Club, in whose eyes, he perhaps thought, our city coat and
country gaiters would not find much favour, he gave us a hasty parting
squeeze of the arm and bolted into Long's just as a mountainous
hackney-coach was rumbling between us and them.

But to the old man. Time rolled on, and at length old Puffington paid the
debt of nature--the only debt, by the way, that he was slow in
discharging--and our friend found himself in possession, not only of the
starch manufactory, but of a very great accumulation of consols--so great
that, though starch is as inoffensive a thing as a man can well deal in, a
thing that never obtrudes itself, or, indeed appears in a shop unless it is
asked for--notwithstanding all this, and though it was bringing him in lots
of money, our friend determined to 'cut the shop' and be done with trade
altogether.

Accordingly, he sold the premises and good-will, with all the stock of
potatoes and wheat, to the foreman, old Soapsuds, at something below what
they were really worth, rather than make any row in the way of advertising;
and the name of 'Soapsuds, Brothers & Co.' reigns on the
blue-and-whitey-brown parcel-ends, where formerly that of Puffington stood
supreme.

It is a melancholy fact, which those best acquainted with London society
can vouch for, that her 'swells' are a very ephemeral race. Take the last
five-and-twenty years--say from the days of the Golden Ball and Pea-green
Hayne down to those of Molly C----l and Mr. D-l-f-ld--and see what a
succession of joyous--no, not joyous, but rattling, careless, dashing,
sixty-percenting youths we have had.

And where are they all now? Some dead, some at Boulogne-sur-Mer, some in
Denman Lodge, some perhaps undergoing the polite attentions of Mr.
Commissioner Phillips, or figuring in Mr. Hemp's periodical publication of
gentlemen 'who are wanted.'

In speaking of 'swells,' of course we are not alluding to men with
reference to their clothes alone, but to men whose dashing, and perhaps
eccentric, exteriors are but indicative of their general system of
extravagance. The man who rests his claims to distinction solely on his
clothes will very soon find himself