n old days such men as Sharpe and
Jekyll and Luttrell illustrated, and, in times more modern, Brookfield
and Cockburn and Lowe and Hayward. For the ordinary chit-chat of social
intercourse--chaff and repartee, gossip and fun and frolic--I believe
that London was just as good in 1876 as it had been fifty years before.
We were young and happy, enjoying ourselves, and on easy terms with one
another. "It was roses, roses all the way." Our talk was unpremeditated
and unstudied, quick as lightning, springing out of the interest or the
situation of the moment, uttered in an instant and as soon forgotten.
Everyone who has ever made the attempt must realize that to gather up
the fragments of such talk as this is as impossible as to collect
shooting stars or to reconstruct a rainbow.

But, though I cannot say what we talked about in those distant days, I
believe I can indicate with certainty two topics which were never
mentioned. One is Health, and the other is Money. I presume that people
had pretty much the same complaints as now, but no one talked about
them. We had been told of a lady who died in agony because she insisted
on telling the doctor that the pain was in her chest, whereas it really
was in the unmentionable organ of digestion. That martyr to propriety
has no imitator in the present day. Everyone has a disease and a doctor,
and young people of both sexes are ready on the slightest acquaintance
to describe symptoms and compare experiences. "Ice!" exclaimed a pretty
girl at dessert. "Good gracious, no. So bad for indy!" And her
companion, who had not travelled with the times, learned with interest
that "indy" was the pet name for indigestion.

Then, again, as to money. In the "Sacred Circle of the Great
Grandmotherhood," I never heard the slightest reference to income. Not
that the Whigs despised money. They were at least as fond of it as other
people, and, even when it took the shape of slum-rents, its odour was
not displeasing; but it was not a subject for conversation. People did
not chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if they made their own
money in trades or professions, they did not regale us with statistics
of profit and loss. To-day everyone seems to be, if I may use the
favourite colloquialism, "on the make"; and the devotion with which
people worship money pervades their whole conversation, and colours
their whole view of life. "Scions of Aristocracy," to use the good old
phrase of Pennialinus, wi