ever
paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!

Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three
suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those
who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand,
for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to
consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only
from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring
under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible
depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain,
and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy
collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time
must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to
them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of
shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure.
They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling
against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so
much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the
proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful
indifference.

But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never
thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which
the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of
the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon
themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants,
the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest
infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the
people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be
victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace
and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home
to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which
you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_.
So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies,
when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather
pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow
you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The
innate c