mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other
guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment of
the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted gates and gaps;
and upon the white satin lining of his "pink" there was a tiny
button-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held with her fairy fingers
at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he
resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as
the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was
going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent
smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of
these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as
though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the
winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" from the procession in
general, and a flash of horizontal scarlet, as when a soldier falls in
battle; and then the bruised and bewildered dandy picked himself up, as
best he could, to perform a part for which his qualifications were
small--the personification of a man who had a relish for pain; and I
sympathised with, though I did not love him--not so much because his
feelings, as because his raiment was torn, and he, who was generally the
most lively and locomotive of all, was now depressed and sedentary, like
the lover of Constance, brooding upon his silent grief, as on its nest
the dove, while we remained at the dinner-table, and finally backing out
of the drawing-room at an early hour, as though our hostess were the
queen.

And his involuntary gymnastics remind me, as I pass on to that
"terrible thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who
ignored it in conversation as though they must be capable of any crime),
of a stout old lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had
been very successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country
residence from some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor
of the difficulty which she had in walking upon the polished floors.
"First I sluther," she said, "and then I hutch; and then I sluther, and
then I hutch; and the more I hutch the more I sluther."

Only one other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and
harum-scarum) from words beginning with H--to be, or cause others to be,
on the _hig_, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a
fume, angrily