id
a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became
afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every
lion's den I had access to. But there was no relief.

"I see what it is, George," said my uncle, "these literary people write
themselves out. They say nothing for private use. Their brains are
weary when they come into company. They get up in the morning fresh
and bright, and write, write, write. Then, when they are jaded, they
condescend to social intercourse. It is their way of resting. But why
don't they go to bed? No more clever people for me, George. Let us
try the smart. Perhaps among them we shall find smart talking still
surviving. _Allons_, George!"

That is how my uncle came into collision with fashion, how I came to
take him to the Fitz-Brilliants.

Of course you have heard of the Fitz-Brilliants? If you have not, it
is not their fault. They are the smartest people in London. Always
hard at work, keeping up to date, are the Fitz-Brilliants. But my
uncle did not appreciate them. Worse! They did not appreciate my
uncle. He came to me again, more pent up than ever, and the thing I
had feared happened. He began to discourse to me. It was about
Fashion, with a decided reference to the Fitz-Brilliants, and some
reflections upon the alleys of literary ability and genius I had taken
him through.

"George," said my uncle, "_this Fashion is just brand-new vulgarity_.
It is merely the regal side of the medal. The Highly Fashionable and
the Absolutely Vulgar are but two faces of the common coin of humanity,
struck millions at a time. Spin the thing in the light of wealth, and
I defy you, as it whizzes from the illumination of riches to the shadow
of poverty, to distinguish the one stamp from the other. You cannot
say, here the _mode_ ends, and there the unspeakable thing, its
counterpart, has its beginning. Their distinction of mere position has
vanished, and they are in seeming as in substance one and indivisible."

My uncle was now fairly under way.

"The fashionable is the foam on the ocean of vulgarity, George, cast up
by the waves of that ocean, and caught by the light of the sun. It is
the vulgar--blossoming. The flower it is of that earthly plant,
destined hereafter to run to seed, and to beget new groves and
thickets, new jungles, of vulgar things.

"Note, George, how true this is of that common property of the vulgar
and fashionable--slang.