Ramrod_, met a gale, and foundered. When they were picked up they
were both dead.--[THE END.]

* * * * *

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

NO. IV.--TO POMPOSITY.

YOUR EXCELLENCY,

How difficult it is to succeed in giving pleasure. When I addressed
you recently, I honestly intended to gratify you by the adoption of
a tone of easy familiarity. Surely, I thought to myself, I cannot be
wrong if I address my friend POMPOSITY by his name, and speak to him
in a chatty rather than in an inflated style. If I chose the latter,
might he not think that I was poking fun at him by cheap parody,
and manifest his displeasure by bringing a host of BULMERS about my
ears? These considerations prevailed with me, and the result was the
letter you received. But, _O pectora caeca_! I have learnt from an
authoritative source that you are displeased. You resent, it seems,
what you are pleased to term my affectation of intimacy, and you beg
for a style of greater respect in any future communications. So be it.
I have pondered for hours, and have eventually come to the conclusion
that I shall best consult your wishes by addressing you in a manner
suited to diplomatic personages of importance. I have noticed that
in their official intercourse these gentlemen move on stilts of the
most rigid punctilio, and I have often pictured to myself the glow
of genuine pride which must suffuse the soul of an ambassador or a
foreign Minister when, for the first time, he finds himself styled an
Excellency. It may be of course that he knows himself to be anything
rather than excellent, but he will keep that knowledge to himself,
stowed away in some remote corner of his mind, and never on any
account allowed to interfere with his enjoyment of the ignorant and
empty compliments that others pay him.

[Illustration]

I wish to ask you a simple question. Why do you render those who spend
their lives in your service so extremely ridiculous? That may be just
the fashion of your humour; but is it fair to persist as you do? There
is, for instance, my old friend BENJAMIN CHUMP, little BEN CHUMP as
we used to call him in the irreverent days, before his face had turned
purple or his waistcoat had prevented him from catching stray glimpses
of his patent-leathered toes. Little BEN was not made for the country,
that was certain. A life of Clubs and dinner-parties would have suited
him to perfection. In his Club he could always pose before a sel