ment or a great
irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion may influence),
to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and spas who
ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as though
they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.

Only in three exceptional cases is it permissible, as I think, to
_gawster_. I like to see a drum-major, with my grandmother's
carriage-muff on his head, and a baton in his hand as long as a
bean-rod, swaggering at the head of his regiment, as though he had only
to knock at the gates of a besieged city and the governor would
instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed the other day at
the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a sublime
indifference when a peacock, having marched some distance for the
purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his
brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their
ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in
accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lempriere's dictionary,
made them wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a
game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a
tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but
admire the gawstering spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he
said, and would have gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or
would have crowed defiance, midway between the rails, as the express
rushed on at speed.

But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to
gawster. I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion
failed, the precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on
Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco
and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to
send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having
lost the shame which is a glory and a grace, and coveting every
adornment but one, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are seen in
our streets, with nearly half a year's wage upon their backs, and the
change on their faces--in brass.

To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical
debility. He who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures
and clanging cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his
shirt-sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at t