in want of society. Many things
contribute to thin the ranks of our swells. Many, as we said before, outrun
the constable. Some get fat, some get married, some get tired, and a few
get wiser. There is, however, always a fine pushing crop coming on. A man
like Puffington, who starts a dandy (in contradistinction to a swell), and
adheres steadily to clothes--talking eternally of the cuts of coats or the
ties of cravats--up to the sober age of forty, must be always falling back
on the rising generation for society.

Puffington was not what the old ladies call a profligate young man. On the
contrary, he was naturally a nice, steady young man; and only indulged in
the vagaries we have described because they were indulged in by the
high-born and gay.

Tom and Jerry had a great deal to answer for in the way of leading
soft-headed young men astray; and old Puffington having had the misfortune
to christen our friend 'Thomas,' of course his companions dubbed him
'Corinthian Tom'; by which name he has been known ever since.

A man of such undoubted wealth could not be otherwise than a great
favourite with the fair, and innumerable were the invitations that poured
into his chambers in the Albany--dinner parties, evening parties, balls,
concerts, boxes for the opera; and as each succeeding season drew to a
close, invitations to those last efforts of the desperate, boating and
whitebait parties.

Corinthian Tom went to them all--at least, to as many as he could
manage--always dressing in the most exemplary way, as though he had been
asked to show his fine clothes instead of to make love to the ladies.
Manifold were the hopes and expectations that he raised. Puff could not
understand that, though it is all very well to be 'an am_aa_zin' instance
of a pop'lar man' with the men, that the same sort of thing does not do
with the ladies.

We have heard that there were six mammas, bowling about in their barouches,
at the close of his second season, innuendoing, nodding, and hinting to
their friends, 'that, &c.,' when there wasn't one of their daughters who
had penetrated the rhinoceros-like hide of his own conceit. The consequence
was that all these ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and
connexions of this life, thought it incumbent upon them to 'blow' our
friend Puff--proclaim how infamously he had behaved--all because he had
danced three supper dances with one girl, brought another a fine bouquet
from Covent Garden, walk