y sweet Jane,
though the dear child had but her ten thousand pounds POUR TOUT POTAGE!'

'Most invaluable person,' whispered Mrs. Major Ponto to me. 'Has lived
in the very highest society:' and I, who have been accustomed to see
governesses bullied in the world, was delighted to find this one ruling
the roast, and to think that even the majestic Mrs. Ponto bent before
her.

As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once. I hadn't a word to say
against a woman who was intimate with every Duchess in the Red Book. She
wasn't the rosebud, but she had been near it. She had rubbed shoulders
with the great, and about these we talked all the evening incessantly,
and about the fashions, and about the Court, until bed-time came.

'And are there Snobs in this Elysium?' I exclaimed, jumping into the
lavender-perfumed bed. Ponto's snoring boomed from the neighbouring
bed-room in reply.

CHAPTER XXVI--ON SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

Something like a journal of the proceedings at the Evergreens may be
interesting to those foreign readers of PUNCH who want to know the
customs of an English gentleman's family and household. There's plenty
of time to keep the Journal. Piano-strumming begins at six o'clock in
the morning; it lasts till breakfast, with but a minute's intermission,
when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practises in place of
her sister Miss Maria.

In fact, the confounded instrument never stops when the young ladies are
at their lessons, Miss Wirt hammers away at those stunning variations,
and keeps her magnificent finger in exercise.

I asked this great creature in what other branches of education she
instructed her pupils? 'The modern languages,' says she modestly:
'French, German, Spanish, and Italian, Latin and the rudiments of Greek
if desired. English of course; the practice of Elocution, Geography,
and Astronomy, and the Use of the Globes, Algebra (but only as far as
quadratic equations); for a poor ignorant female, you know, Mr. Snob,
cannot be expected to know everything. Ancient and Modern History
no young woman can be without; and of these I make my beloved pupils
PERFECT MISTRESSES. Botany, Geology, and Mineralogy, I consider as
amusements. And with these I assure you we manage to pass the days at
the Evergreens not unpleasantly.'

Only these, thought I--what an education! But I looked in one of Miss
Ponto's manuscript song-books and found five faults of French in four
words; and in a waggish mo