lf posted in all they've written and done.
Precious little they know about bimetallism or politics!

Is it only on account of their pretty manners that my titled friends
are such favorites with these highly intellectual guests of
mine--and with me? If so, then pretty manners should come before
everything else in the world, and be taught instead of Latin and
Greek.

But if it's only because they're noble lords, then I'm beginning to
think with Mr. Labouchere that it's high time the Upper House were
abolished, and its denizens wafted into space, since they make such
snobs of us all--including your humble servant, of course, who at
least is not quite so snobbish as to know himself for a damned snob
and pretend he isn't one.

Anyhow, I'm glad my life has been such a success. But would I live
it all over again? Even the best of it? The "forty year"?

Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly not.

I have only met two men of my own age who would live their lives
over again. They both cared more for their meals than for anything
else in the world--and they have always had four of these every day;
sometimes even five! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree
with them! affaire d'estomac! They simply want to eat all those
meals once more. They lived to feed, and to refeed would re-live!

My meals have never disagreed with me either--but I have always
found them monotonous; they have always been so simple and so
regular when I've had the ordering of them! Fried soles, chops or
steaks, and that sort of thing, and a pint of lager-beer--no wine
for me, thank you; I sell it--and all this just to serve as a mere
foundation for a smoke--and a chat with Barty, if possible!

Hardly ever an ache or a pain, and I wouldn't live it all over
again! yet I hope to live another twenty years, if only to take
Leah's unborn great-grandchildren to the dentist's, and tip them at
school, and treat them to the pantomime and Madame Tussaud's, as I
did their mothers and grandmothers before them--or their fathers and
grandfathers.

This seems rather inconsistent! For would I care, twenty years
hence, to re-live these coming twenty years? Evidently not--it's out
of the question.

So why don't I give up at once? I know how to do it, without pain,
without scandal, without even invalidating my life-insurance, about
which I don't care a rap!

Why don't I? why don't _you_, O middle-aged reader--with all the
infirmities of age be