always pay for the ladies! Nor was this all the expense to which his
expectations exposed him. A gentleman could scarcely attend these
elegant festivities without devoting some little attention to his dress;
and a fashionable tailor plays the deuce with one's yearly allowance.

We who reside, be it known to you, reader, in Little Brittany are not
very well acquainted with the manners of the better classes in St.
James's. But there was one great vice among the fine people about Thames
Court which we make no doubt does not exist anywhere else,--namely,
these fine people were always in an agony to seem finer than they were;
and the more airs a gentleman or a lady gave him or her self, the more
important they became. Joe, the dog's-meat man, had indeed got into
society entirely from a knack of saying impertinent things to everybody;
and the smartest exclusives of the place, who seldom visited any one
where there was not a silver teapot, used to think Joe had a great deal
in him because he trundled his cart with his head in the air, and one
day gave the very beadle of the parish "the cut direct."

Now this desire to be so exceedingly fine not only made the society
about Thames Court unpleasant, but expensive. Every one vied with
his neighbour; and as the spirit of rivalry is particularly strong
in youthful bosoms, we can scarcely wonder that it led Paul into many
extravagances. The evil of all circles that profess to be select is high
play; and the reason is obvious: persons who have the power to bestow
on another an advantage he covets would rather sell it than give it;
and Paul, gradually increasing in popularity and ton, found himself, in
spite of his classical education, no match for the finished, or,
rather, finishing gentlemen with whom he began to associate. His first
admittance into the select coterie of these men of the world was formed
at the house of Bachelor Bill, a person of great notoriety among
that portion of the elite which emphatically entitles itself "Flash."
However, as it is our rigid intention in this work to portray at length
no episodical characters whatsoever, we can afford our readers but a
slight and rapid sketch of Bachelor Bill.

This personage was of Devonshire extraction. His mother had kept the
pleasantest public-house in town, and at her death Bill succeeded to her
property and popularity. All the young ladies in the neighbourhood of
Fiddler's Row, where he resided, set their caps at him: al