We must all, as boys, remember when we went to the
fair, and had spent all our money--the sort of awe and anxiety with
which we loitered round the outside of the show, speculating upon the
nature of the entertainment going on within.
Man is a Drama--of Wonder and Passion, and Mystery and Meanness, and
Beauty and Truthfulness, and Etcetera. Each Bosom is a Booth in Vanity
Fair. But let us stop this capital style, I should die if I kept it
up for a column (a pretty thing a column all capitals would be, by the
way). In a Club, though there mayn't be a soul of your acquaintance
in the room, you have always the chance of watching strangers, and
speculating on what is going on within those tents and curtains of their
souls, their coats and waistcoats. This is a never-failing sport. Indeed
I am told there are some Clubs in the town where nobody ever speaks to
anybody. They sit in the coffee-room, quite silent, and watching each
other.
Yet how little you can tell from a man's outward demeanour! There's a
man at our Club--large, heavy, middle-aged--gorgeously dressed--rather
bald--with lacquered boots--and a boa when he goes out; quiet in
demeanour, always ordering and consuming a RECHERCHE little dinner: whom
I have mistaken for Sir John Pocklington any time these five years, and
respected as a man with five hundred pounds PER DIEM; and I find he
is but a clerk in an office in the City, with not two hundred pounds
income, and his name is Jubber.
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