plate.
Suppose you pretend to be richer and grander than you ought to be--you
are a Dinner-giving Snob. And oh, I tremble to think how many and many a
one will read this!

A man who entertains in this way--and, alas, how few do not!--is like
a fellow who would borrow his neighbour's coat to make a show in, or a
lady who flaunts in the diamonds from next door--a humbug, in a word,
and amongst the Snobs he must be set down.

A man who goes out of his natural sphere of society to ask Lords,
Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of
his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob. My
dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at
a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a
three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull
as--well, we will not particularise. Tufthunt never has a dinner now but
you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs.
Tufthunt--Tufthunt is a Dinner-giving Snob.

Old Livermore, old Soy, old Chutney, the East Indian Director, old
Cutler, the Surgeon, &c.,--that society of old fogies, in fine, who give
each other dinners round and round, and dine for the mere purpose of
guttling--these, again, are Dinner-giving Snobs.

Again, my friend Lady MacScrew, who has three grenadier flunkeys in lace
round the table, and serves up a scrag-of-mutton on silver, and dribbles
you out bad sherry and port by thimblefuls, is a Dinner-giving Snob of
the other sort; and I confess, for my part, I would rather dine with old
Livermore or old Soy than with her Ladyship.

Stinginess is snobbish. Ostentation is snobbish. Too great profusion
is snobbish. Tuft-hunting is snobbish. But I own there are people more
snobbish than all those whose defects are above mentioned: viz., those
individuals who can, and don't give dinners at all. The man without
hospitality shall never sit SUB IISDEM TRABIBUS with ME. Let the sordid
wretch go mumble his bone alone!

What, again, is true hospitality? Alas, my dear friends and brother
Snobs! how little do we meet of it after all! Are the motives PURE which
induce your friends to ask you to dinner? This has often come across me.
Does your entertainer want something from you? For instance, I am not of
a suspicious turn; but it IS a fact that when Hookey is bringing out a
new work, he asks the critics all round to dinner; that when Walker has
got his picture ready for the Ex