ace.

His conduct was perfectly odious--that is, to any right-thinking person.

Curates and cousins are, I consider, two of the greatest obstacles to an
innocent layman's intimacy with the diviner portion of creation; and, in
these days of reform and disestablishment, of hereditary and other
conservative grievances, something ought to be done to abolish the
persons in question, or at least handicap them so that other deserving
young men might have a fair chance in the race for beauty's smile and
Hymen's chain. They have an enormous advantage, at present, over
outside men-folk. Girls like to have a sort of good-natured lap-dog
about them, to play with occasionally and run their errands, "do this"
and "that" for the asking--like Cornelius the centurion's obedient
servant--and make himself generally useful, without looking for any
ulterior reward on account of services rendered. You see, cousins and
curates are regarded as "harmless"--"detrimentals with the chill off,"
so to speak. His scrap of relationship throws a glimmer of possession
around the one, endowing with inherent right every act of his ministry;
while his "cloth" invests the other with a halo of sanctity and Platonic
freedom that disarms gossip of the usual clothes-peg whereon it hangs
its scandal. "Cousin Tom"--by-the-way, did you ever read Mackworth
Praed's lines on the same theme?--is allowed opportunities for, and
latitude in, flirtation, which poor Corydon, not a cousin never so
remote, may sigh in vain for; and, who would be so despicable as to
impute secular motives to the Reverend Hobplush's tender ministrations
towards those sweet young "sisters," who dote on his sucking sermons and
work him carpet slippers and text-markers without limit? Certainly, not
I.

I do not mean to say, however, that curates and cousins have it all
their own way always. There's a sweet little cupid who "sits up aloft,"
like Jack's guardian angel, to watch o'er the loves of poor laymen.
Still, it is very galling, to one of an ardent temperament especially,
to mark the anxious solicitude with which "Cousin Tom" may hang over the
divine creature--whom you can only look upon from afar as some distant
star--without attracting any observations anent his "attentions." The
confounded airs of possession he gives himself, while you are
languishing "out in the cold," in the expressive vernacular, are
frightful to contemplate. As for curate Hobplush, he may drop in
whenever h