dividual should seek to appear of a higher social status than Nature has provided; but my youthful acquaintance, Allbutt-Innett, Jun., Esq., informs me that this is a common failing among the English classes, who fondly imagine that nothing is needed to render a frog the exact equivalent to an ox except an increased quantity of air, forgetting that if a frog is abnormally inflated, it is apt to provide the rather ludicrous catastrophe of exploding from excessive swellishness!
However revenons à nos moutons—id est, the dinner party.
I intended to be the early bird at Prince's Square, but, owing to a rarity among the hansom cabs, did not arrive until most of the guests were already assembled, being welcomed with effusive hospitality by the household god and goddess, Mr and Mrs Allbutt-Innett, who begged leave to present to me all the most distinguished of their friends.
Then—pop, and à l'improviste—the door was thrown open, and a butler announced ore rotundo, Sir Chetwynd Cummerbund, whom, in the wink of an eye, I recognised as an ex-Justice of the very court in Calcutta in which my male progenitor practices as a mook-tear, or attorney, and who, moreover, was familiar with myself almost ab ovo, having been more than once humbly presented to his notice by my said father, with a request for his patronising
