habby-genteel. The 'harmonic meetings' at some fourth-rate
public-house, or the purlieus of a private theatre, are his chosen
haunts; he entertains a rooted antipathy to any kind of work, and is on
familiar terms with several pantomime men at the large houses. But, if
you see hurrying along a by-street, keeping as close as he can to the
area-railings, a man of about forty or fifty, clad in an old rusty suit
of threadbare black cloth which shines with constant wear as if it had
been bees-waxed--the trousers tightly strapped down, partly for the look
of the thing and partly to keep his old shoes from slipping off at the
heels,--if you observe, too, that his yellowish-white neckerchief is
carefully pinned up, to conceal the tattered garment underneath, and that
his hands are encased in the remains of an old pair of beaver gloves, you
may set him down as a shabby-genteel man. A glance at that depressed
face, and timorous air of conscious poverty, will make your heart
ache--always supposing that you are neither a philosopher nor a political
economist.

We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man; he was bodily present to
our senses all day, and he was in our mind's eye all night. The man of
whom Sir Walter Scott speaks in his Demonology, did not suffer half the
persecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in black velvet, that we
sustained from our friend in quondam black cloth. He first attracted our
notice, by sitting opposite to us in the reading-room at the British
Museum; and what made the man more remarkable was, that he always had
before him a couple of shabby-genteel books--two old dog's-eared folios,
in mouldy worm-eaten covers, which had once been smart. He was in his
chair, every morning, just as the clock struck ten; he was always the
last to leave the room in the afternoon; and when he did, he quitted it
with the air of a man who knew not where else to go, for warmth and
quiet. There he used to sit all day, as close to the table as possible,
in order to conceal the lack of buttons on his coat: with his old hat
carefully deposited at his feet, where he evidently flattered himself it
escaped observation.

About two o'clock, you would see him munching a French roll or a penny
loaf; not taking it boldly out of his pocket at once, like a man who knew
he was only making a lunch; but breaking off little bits in his pocket,
and eating them by stealth. He knew too well it was his dinner.

When we first saw t