Grabguy warrants his admittance into very
respectable, and, some say, rather distinguished society. Indeed, it
is more than whispered, that when the question of admitting Mr. and
Mrs. Grabguy to the membership of a very select circle, the saintly
cognomen of which is as indefinable as its system of selecting
members, or the angles presented by the nasal organs of a few ladies
when anything short of the very first families are proposed, there
were seven very fashionable ladies for, and only three against. The
greatest antagonist the Grabguys have to getting into the embrace of
this very select circle is Mrs. Chief Justice Pimpkins, a matronly
body of some fifty summers, who declares there can be no judge in
the world so clever as her own dear Pimpkins, and that society was
becoming so vulgar and coarse, and so many low people-whose English
was as hopefully bad as could be, and who never spoke when they
didn't impugn her risible nerves-were intruding themselves upon its
polished sanctity, that she felt more and more every day the
necessity of withdrawing entirely from it, and enjoying her own
exclusively distinguished self. In the case of Grabguy's admittance
to the St. Cecilia, my Lady Pimpkins-she is commonly called Lady
Chief Justice Pimpkins-had two most formidable black balls; the
first because Mrs. Grabguy's father was a bread-baker, and the
second that the present Grabguy could not be considered a gentleman
while he continued in mechanical business.
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