f course, some who are rather amusing in their little pretentious
ways--as there are in all large communities. Many of these, finding
themselves well off, begin to discover they had ancestors. They name
their houses after places where their grandfathers lived or should have
lived. They put crests upon their carriages; they embellish their
stationery with a motto, and otherwise put on a little of what is called
"side." But Birmingham people are not worse than others in this respect.
In fact, I think there is less affectation, pretence, and snobbishness,
or at any rate as little as will be found in most places of the
standing, wealth, and importance of Birmingham.

Sometimes when I am visiting a newly-risen manufacturing town which has
lately blossomed out into a state of thriving progress, I am forcibly
reminded of what Birmingham was some years ago, and think of the changes
that have come over our city during the past thirty or forty years. The
everyday social life is in many respects different from what it was.
Young people, with a higher education and more advanced ideas than their
sires, keep their parents up to date, and it is the young people who
rule the roost in many houses. The hearty but comparatively simple
hospitalities of a generation or so ago are regarded as quite too
ancient.

Young men who have been to Harrow and Oxford are not likely to look with
favour upon suppers of tripe or Welsh rarebits. They must, of course,
dine in a proper, decent manner in the evening, and there must be a good
experienced cook to give them a fair variety of dainties; or, at least,
of well-prepared dishes. Under such circumstances social functions have
naturally a tendency to become more formal, ornamental, and refined.
Many of the older-fashioned school mourn the decay of the very thorough
and hearty hospitality of times back, and have often complained that
they saw too many flowers and too little food at modern dinner parties.
Still, the knock-down entertainments of our fathers were often a trifle
too formidable perhaps, and did not always bring the pleasant
reflections that follow the more gentle hospitalities of the present
day.

Before I close this chapter, in which I am comparing the present with
the past, I cannot help calling to mind features of Birmingham nearly
fifty years ago, when I began to look about me with my boyish eyes. I
made some general reference to these in the opening chapter of these
sketches. I will