oubt, why the spectators are allowed to consume liquors and
sandwiches throughout the performance, since it is well known that the
brain cannot carry on its _modus operandi_ with efficiency if the
stomach is in the beggarly array of an empty box!

XIV

_Mr Jabberjee's fellow-student. What's in a Title? An invitation to a
Wedding. Mr J. as a wedding guest, with what he thought of the
ceremony, and how he distinguished himself on the occasion._

There is a certain English young fellow-student of mine--to wit and
_videlicet_, HOWARD ALLBUTT-INNETT, Esquire, with whom I have succeeded
in scratching an acquaintance at sundry Law Lectures, and in the Library
of my Inn of Court--a most amiable tip-top young chap, who is "the
moulded glass of fashionable form," and cap-in-hand with innumerable
aristocratic nobs.

Seeing that I had (at an earlier period) been a more diligent attendant
and note-taker of lectures than himself, he did pay me the transcendent
compliment of borrowing the loan of my note-book, which, to my grateful
astonishment, he condescended to bring back personally to Porticobello
House, saying that he had found my notes magnificent, and totally
incomprehensible to his more limited intellect!

In _additum_, he graciously accepted my invitation to ascend to the
drawing-room, where I introduced him freely to several select lady
boarders as my _alter ego_ and _Fidus Achates_.

On taking his leave, he expressed some marvelling that I should have
concealed my superior rank under the reticence of a napkin, having
observed that I was addressed as "Prince" by more than one of the
softer-sexed boarders.

I replied that I attached no valid importance to the _nominis umbra_ of
such a barren title, and that the contents of what there is nothing in
must necessarily be naught.

He answered me warmly that he entirely joined issue with me in such an
opinion, and that he was often affected to sickishness by the snobbery
of mundane society, adding that he hoped I would give him the look up at
his paternal mansion in Prince's Square, Bayswater, shortly, since his
people would be overjoyed at making my acquaintance, which both
enraptured and surprised me, for hitherto he had ridden the high and
rough-shoed horse, and employed me to suck my brains as a cat's foot.

And odzookers! before many days I was the recipient of a silver-lettered
missive, stating that Mr and Mrs LEOFRIC ALLBUTT-INNETT did request the