Honourable Sniftky to take down
miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master
of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where
you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has
inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.

You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that
distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky,
_ex-officio_, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy
round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured
by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in
attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of
assize, go circuit.

Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a
_plateau, candelabrum_, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre
of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the
twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and
enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a _present_; the
gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters
into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of
the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT
TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in
which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote
Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained
the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own
con----"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of
the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting
short the oration.

A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry
multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is
not the best; he knows it is the _dearest_, and that is enough for him;
he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much
he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been
sufficiently fishified, there is an _interregnum_, filled up with
another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the _pieces de
resistance_, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual _etceteras_.
The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a _staccato_ style; a
touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable
Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compl