My wife speaks with great circumspection--'proper pride,' she calls it--to our neighbour the tradesman's lady: and she, I mean Mrs.Snob,--Eliza--would give one of her eyes to go to Court, as her cousin, the Captain's wife, did.

She, again, is a good soul, but it costs her agonies to be obliged to confess that we live in Upper Thompson Street, Somers Town.

And though I believe in her heart Mrs.Whiskerington is fonder of us than of her cousins, the Smigsmags, you should hear how she goes on prattling about Lady Smigsmag,--and 'I said to Sir John, my dear John;' and about the Smigsmags' house and parties in Hyde Park Terrace.
Lady Smigsmag, when she meets Eliza,--who is a sort of a kind of a species of a connection of the family, pokes out one finger, which my wife is at liberty to embrace in the most cordial manner she can devise.
But oh, you should see her ladyship's behaviour on her first-chop dinner-party days, when Lord and Lady Longears come! I can bear it no longer--this diabolical invention of gentility which kills natural kindliness and honest friendship.

Proper pride, indeed! Rank and precedence, forsooth! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie, and should be flung into the fire.

Organize rank and precedence! that was well for the masters of ceremonies of former ages.