mutton, without
ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner
that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as
apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or
"I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected
depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who
will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are
like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the
reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.

If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after
the appointed time, although you arrived to a _minute_, as every
Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the
gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and
has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host,
hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of
Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats
attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the
other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow
waistcoats, and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig
of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of
miss, asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back
of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening
parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and
another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every
opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes
with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud
but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a
prolonged _rat-tat-tat_ announces the arrival of the noble beast, the
lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in
the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the
day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed
coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a
sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by
the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and
wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.

As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not
strictly understood, the host desires