Your footmen do it, but they are paid; and the fellow who comes to
get a list of the company when you give a banquet or a dancing breakfast
at Longueoreille House, gets money from the newspapers for performing
that service. But for us, thank you for nothing, Longears my boy, and we
don't wish to pay you any more than we owe. We will take off our hats to
Wellington because he is Wellington; but to you--who are you?'
I am sick of COURT CIRCULARS. I loathe HAUT-TON intelligence. I believe
such words as Fashionable, Exclusive, Aristocratic, and the like, to
be wicked, unchristian epithets, that ought to be banished from honest
vocabularies. A Court system that sends men of genius to the second
table, I hold to be a Snobbish system. A society that sets up to be
polite, and ignores Arts and Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish society.
You, who despise your neighbour, are a Snob; you, who forget your own
friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a Snob;
you, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are
a Snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your
wealth.
To laugh at such is MR. PUNCH'S business. May he laugh honestly, hit
no foul blow, and tell the truth when at his very broadest grin--never
forgetting that if Fun is good, Truth is still better, and Love best of
all.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Book of Snobs, by William Makepeace Thackeray
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF SNOBS ***
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