us! Read the
fashionable intelligence; read the COURT CIRCULAR; read the genteel
novels; survey mankind, from Pimlico to Red Lion Square, and see how the
Poor Snob is aping the Rich Snob; how the Mean Snob is grovelling at the
feet of the Proud Snob; and the Great Snob is lording it over his humble
brother. Does the idea of equality ever enter Dives' head? Will it ever?
Will the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe (I like a good name) ever believe that
Lady Croesus, her next-door neighbour in Belgrave Square, is as good a
lady as her Grace? Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining the Duchess's
parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth whose husband has not got
his Baronetcy yet? Will Mrs. Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with
Mrs. Seedy, and give up those odious calculations about poor dear Mrs.
Seedy's income? Will Mrs. Seedy who is starving in her great house, go
and live comfortably in a little one, or in lodgings? Will her landlady,
Miss Letsam, ever stop wondering at the familiarity of tradespeople, or
rebuking the insolence of Suky, the maid, who wears flowers under her
bonnet like a lady?

But why hope, why wish for such times? Do I wish all Snobs to perish? Do
I wish these Snob papers to determine? Suicidal fool, art not thou, too,
a Snob and a brother?

CHAPTER XXXVII--CLUB SNOBS

As I wish to be particularly agreeable to the ladies (to whom I make my
most humble obeisance), we will now, if you please, commence maligning
a class of Snobs against whom, I believe, most female minds are
embittered--I mean Club Snobs. I have very seldom heard even the most
gentle and placable woman speak without a little feeling of bitterness
against those social institutions, those palaces swaggering in St.
James's, which are open to the men; while the ladies have but their
dingy three-windowed brick boxes in Belgravia or in Paddingtonia, or in
the region between the road of Edgware and that of Gray's Inn.

In my grandfather's time it used to be Freemasonry that roused their
anger. It was my grand-aunt (whose portrait we still have in the family)
who got into the clock-case at the Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay,
Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband
was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking
eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the
mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the
midst of the lodge assembled; a