d bear it no longer, and fairly quitted the place.

Should the Colonel see this, will he remember the Gent who asked him if
he thought Publicoaler was a fine writer, and drove him from the Hotel
with a four-pronged fork?

CHAPTER I--THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH

There are relative and positive Snobs. I mean by positive, such persons
as are Snobs everywhere, in all companies, from morning till night,
from youth to the grave, being by Nature endowed with Snobbishness--and
others who are Snobs only in certain circumstances and relations of
life.

For instance: I once knew a man who committed before me an act as
atrocious as that which I have indicated in the last chapter as
performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the
using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man
who, dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house,' (opposite the
Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining
at Naples,) ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person
with whose society I was greatly pleased at first--indeed, we had met in
the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held to
ransom by brigands in Calabria, which is nothing to the purpose--a man
of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information; but I had
never before seen him with a dish of pease, and his conduct in regard to
them caused me the deepest pain.

After having seen him thus publicly comport himself, but one course was
open to me--to cut his acquaintance. I commissioned a mutual friend
(the Honourable Poly Anthus) to break the matter to this gentleman as
delicately as possible, and to say that painful circumstances--in nowise
affecting Mr. Marrowfat's honour, or my esteem for him--had occurred,
which obliged me to forego my intimacy with him; and accordingly we met
and gave each other the cut direct that night at the Duchess of Monte
Fiasco's ball.

Everybody at Naples remarked the separation of the Damon and
Pythias--indeed, Marrowfat had saved my life more than once--but, as an
English gentleman, what was I to do?

My dear friend was, in this instance, the Snob RELATIVE. It is not
snobbish of persons of rank of any other nation to employ their knife in
the manner alluded to. I have seen Monte Fiasco clean his trencher with
his knife, and every Principe in company doing likewise. I have seen,
at the hospitable board of H.I.H. the Grand Duchess Stephani