If he can't catch a lord he will hook on to a
baronet, or else the old wretch will catch hold of some beardless young
stripling of fashion, and show him 'life' in various and amiable and
inaccessible quarters. Faugh! the old brute! If he has every one of the
vices of the most boisterous youth, at least he is comforted by having
no conscience. He is utterly stupid, but of a jovial turn, He believes
himself to be quite a respectable member of society: but perhaps the
only good action he ever did in his life is the involuntary one of
giving an example to be avoided, and showing what an odious thing in
the social picture is that figure of the debauched old man who passes
through life rather a decorous Silenus, and dies some day in his garret,
alone, unrepenting, and unnoted, save by his astonished heirs, who find
that the dissolute old miser has left money behind him. See! he is up to
old Carabas already! I told you he would.
Yonder you see the old Lady Mary MacScrew, and those middle-aged young
women her daughters; they are going to cheapen and haggle in Belgium and
up the Rhine until they meet with a boarding-house where they can live
upon less board-wages than her ladyship pays her footmen. But she will
exact and receive considerable respect from the British Snobs located in
the watering place which she selects for her summer residence, being the
daughter of the Earl of Haggistoun.
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