That young lady smiled. She knew it at once. Her mind straightway filled
up the two letters concealed by apostrophic reserve, and I read in her
assenting eyes that she knew Jawkins was a Snob. You seldom get them
to make use of the word as yet, it is true; but it is inconceivable how
pretty an expression their little smiling mouths assume when they speak
it out. If any young lady doubts, just let her go up to her own room,
look at herself steadily in the glass, and say 'Snob.' If she tries this
simple experiment, my life for it, she will smile, and own that the word
becomes her mouth amazingly. A pretty little round word, all composed of
soft letters, with a hiss at the beginning, just to make it piquant, as
it were.
Jawkins, meanwhile, went on blundering, and bragging and boring, quite
unconsciously. And so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, to
the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot
alter the nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by laying
ever so many stripes on a donkey's back, you can't turn him into a
zebra.
But we can warn the neighbourhood that the person whom they and Jawkins
admire is an impostor. We apply the Snob test to him, and try whether he
is conceited and a quack, whether pompous and lacking humility--whether
uncharitable and proud of his narrow soul? How does he treat a great
man--how regard a small one? How does he comport himself in the presence
of His Grace the Duke; and how in that of Smith the tradesman?
And it seems to me that all English society is cursed by this
mammoniacal superstition; and that we are sneaking and bowing and
cringing on the one hand, or bullying and scorning on the other,
from the lowest to the highest.
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