We were at the Finish together till six this morning--such fun!--bonneted a Charley, stole his rattle, and broke an early breakfast-man's stall all to shivers.' Just then up came a broad-brimmed hat, above a confused mass of greatcoats and coloured shawls.
'Holloa, Jack!' exclaimed Mr.Puffington, laying hold of a mother-of-pearl button nearly as large as a tart-plate, 'not off yet ?' 'Just going,' replied Jack, with a touch of his hat, as he rolled on, adding, 'want aught down the road ?' 'What coachman is that ?' asked we.
'_Coachman!_' replied Puff, with a snort.

'That's Jack Linchpin--Honourable Jack Linchpin--son of Lord Splinterbars--best gentleman coachman in England.' So Puffington sauntered along, good morninging 'Sir Harrys' and 'Sir Jameses,' and 'Lord Johns' and 'Lord Toms,' till, seeing a batch of irreproachable dandies flattening their noses against the windows of the Sailors' Old Club, in whose eyes, he perhaps thought, our city coat and country gaiters would not find much favour, he gave us a hasty parting squeeze of the arm and bolted into Long's just as a mountainous hackney-coach was rumbling between us and them.
But to the old man.

Time rolled on, and at length old Puffington paid the debt of nature--the only debt, by the way, that he was slow in discharging--and our friend found himself in possession, not only of the starch manufactory, but of a very great accumulation of consols--so great that, though starch is as inoffensive a thing as a man can well deal in, a thing that never obtrudes itself, or, indeed appears in a shop unless it is asked for--notwithstanding all this, and though it was bringing him in lots of money, our friend determined to 'cut the shop' and be done with trade altogether.
Accordingly, he sold the premises and good-will, with all the stock of potatoes and wheat, to the foreman, old Soapsuds, at something below what they were really worth, rather than make any row in the way of advertising; and the name of 'Soapsuds, Brothers & Co.' reigns on the blue-and-whitey-brown parcel-ends, where formerly that of Puffington stood supreme.
It is a melancholy fact, which those best acquainted with London society can vouch for, that her 'swells' are a very ephemeral race.

Take the last five-and-twenty years--say from the days of the Golden Ball and Pea-green Hayne down to those of Molly C----l and Mr.D-l-f-ld--and see what a succession of joyous--no, not joyous, but rattling, careless, dashing, sixty-percenting youths we have had.
And where are they all now?
Some dead, some at Boulogne-sur-Mer, some in Denman Lodge, some perhaps undergoing the polite attentions of Mr.
Commissioner Phillips, or figuring in Mr.Hemp's periodical publication of gentlemen 'who are wanted.' In speaking of 'swells,' of course we are not alluding to men with reference to their clothes alone, but to men whose dashing, and perhaps eccentric, exteriors are but indicative of their general system of extravagance.

The man who rests his claims to distinction solely on his clothes will very soon find himself in want of society.