[The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookThe Book of Snobs CHAPTER XLIV--CLUB SNOBS 11/16
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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