Scotland in August. Italy in
the winter. Cursed rheumatism. Come to London in March, and toddle
about at the Club, old boy; and we won't go home till maw-aw-rning till
daylight does appear.

'And here's the wreck of two lives!' mused the present Snobographer,
after taking leave of Jack Spiggot. 'Pretty merry Letty Lovelace's
rudder lost and she cast away, and handsome Jack Spiggot stranded on the
shore like a drunken Trinculo.'

What was it that insulted Nature (to use no higher name), and perverted
her kindly intentions towards them? What cursed frost was it that
nipped the love that both were bearing, and condemned the girl to sour
sterility, and the lad to selfish old-bachelorhood? It was the infernal
Snob tyrant who governs us all, who says, 'Thou shalt not love without
a lady's maid; thou shalt not marry without a carriage and horses; thou
shalt have no wife in thy heart, and no children on thy knee, without
a page in buttons and a French BONNE; thou shalt go to the devil unless
thou hast a brougham; marry poor, and society shall forsake thee; thy
kinsmen shall avoid thee as a criminal; thy aunts and uncles shall turn
up their eyes and bemoan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or Harry has
thrown himself away.' You, young woman, may sell yourself without shame,
and marry old Croesus; you, young man, may lie away your heart and your
life for a jointure. But if 'you are poor, woe be to you! Society, the
brutal Snob autocrat, consigns you to solitary perdition. Wither, poor
girl, in your garret; rot, poor bachelor, in your Club.

When I see those graceless recluses--those unnatural monks and nuns of
the order of St. Beelzebub, (1) my hatred for Snobs, and their worship,
and their idols, passes all continence. Let us hew down that man-eating
Juggernaut, I say, that hideous Dagon; and I glow with the heroic
courage of Tom Thumb, and join battle with the giant Snob.

(1) This, of course, is understood to apply only to those unmarried
persons whom a mean and Snobbish fear about money has kept from
fulfilling their natural destiny. Many persons there are devoted to
celibacy because they cannot help it. Of these a man would be a brute
who spoke roughly. Indeed, after Miss O'Toole's conduct to the writer,
he would be the last to condemn. But never mind, these are personal
matters.

CHAPTER XXXIV--SNOBS AND MARRIAGE

In that noble romance called 'Ten Thousand a Year,' I remember a
profoundly pathetic description of