We were premature in
pronouncing our verdict of youthful Snobbishness The man without straps
fulfilled his destiny and duty. He eased his old governor, the curate
in Westmoreland, or helped his sisters to set up the Ladies' School. He
wrote a 'Dictionary,' or a 'Treatise on Conic Sections,' as his nature
and genius prompted. He got a fellowship: and then took to himself a
wife, and a living. He presides over a parish now, and thinks it rather
a dashing thing to belong to the 'Oxford and Cambridge Club;' and his
parishioners love him, and snore under his sermons. No, no, HE is not a
Snob. It is not straps that make the gentleman, or highlows that unmake
him, be they ever so thick. My son, it is you who are the Snob if you
lightly despise a man for doing his duty, and refuse to shake an honest
man's hand because it wears a Berlin glove.
We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a parcel of lads
who had been whipped three months previous, and were not allowed more
than three glasses of port at home, to sit down to pineapples and ices
at each other's rooms, and fuddle themselves with champagne and claret.
One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder.
Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad
wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk
punch--smoking--ghastly headache--frightful spectacle of dessert-table
next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman,
dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in
Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.
Pages:
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92