Whenever I ask a couple
of Dukes and a Marquis or so to dine with me, I set them down to a piece
of beef, or a leg-of-mutton and trimmings. The grandees thank you for
this simplicity, and appreciate the same. My dear Jones, ask any of
those whom you have the honour of knowing, if such be not the case.
I am far from wishing that their Graces should treat me in a similar
fashion. Splendour is a part of their station, as decent comfort (let us
trust), of yours and mine. Fate has comfortably appointed gold plate for
some, and has bidden others contentedly to wear the willow-pattern. And
being perfectly contented (indeed humbly thankful--for look around, O
Jones, and see the myriads who are not so fortunate,) to wear honest
linen, while magnificos of the world are adorned with cambric and
point-lace, surely we ought to hold as miserable, envious fools, those
wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing
besides,--the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind
them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to
strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the
sunshine!
The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this world: and never,
since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they
are at present in this free country.
How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in hand?--the
Dinner-giving Snob.
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