第61章

A VISIT TO SOME COUNTRY SNOBS

'Why, dear Mr.Snob,' said a young lady of rank and fashion (to whom I present my best compliments), 'if you found everything so SNOBBISH at the Evergreens, if the pig bored you and the mutton was not to your liking, and Mrs.Ponto was a humbug, and Miss Wirt a nuisance, with her abominable piano practice,--why did you stay so long?'

Ah, Miss, what a question! Have you never heard of gallant British soldiers storming batteries, of doctors passing nights in plague wards of lazarettos, and other instances of martyrdom? What do you suppose induced gentlemen to walk two miles up to the batteries of Sabroan, with a hundred and fifty thundering guns bowling them down by hundreds?--not pleasure, surely.What causes your respected father to quit his comfortable home for his chambers, after dinner, and pore over the most dreary law papers until long past midnight?, Mademoiselle; duty, which must be done alike by military, or legal, or literary gents.There's a power of martyrdom in our profession.

You won't believe it? Your rosy lips assume a smile of incredulity--a most naughty and odious expression in a young lady's face.Well, then, the fact is, that my chambers, No.24, Pump Court, Temple, were being painted by the Honourable Society, and Mrs.Slamkin, my laundress, having occasion to go into Durham to see her daughter, who is married, and has presented her with the sweetest little grandson--a few weeks could not be better spent than in rusticating.But ah, how delightful Pump Court looked when I revisited its well-known chimney-pots! CARI LUOGHI.Welcome, welcome, O fog and smut!

But if you think there is no moral in the foregoing account of the Pontine family, you are, Madam, most painfully mistaken.In this very chapter we are going to have the moral--why, the whole of the papers are nothing BUT the moral, setting forth as they do the folly of being a Snob.

You will remark that in the Country Snobography my poor friend Ponto has been held up almost exclusively for the public gaze--and why? Because we went to no other house?

Because other families did not welcome us to their mahogany? No, no.Sir John Hawbuck of the Haws, Sir John Hipsley of Briary Hall, don't shut the gates of hospitality: of General Sago's mulligatawny I could speak from experience.And the two old ladies at Guttlebury, were they nothing? Do you suppose that an agreeable young dog, who shall be nameless, would not be made welcome? Don't you know that people are too glad to see ANYBODY in the country?

But those dignified personages do not enter into the scheme of the present work, and are but minor characters of our Snob drama; just as, in the play, kings and emperors are not half so important as many humble persons.The DOGE OF VENICE, for instance, gives way to OTHELLO, who is but a nigger; and the KING OF FRANCE to FALCONBRIDGE, who is a gentleman of positively no birth at all.So with the exalted characters above mentioned.