Year: 1868

making, at least they are spared the
pangs of jealousy: If appetite is inn
paired, it is the liver and not the heart
late hours, and not blighted Affections
Their lives flow along easily enough;
and, as rule, a mind at peace with
themselves and all the world leaves them
wonderfully good digestion. If max
ing their own happiness the chief end of
their lives has narrowed the circle of their
sympathies, at least it has proportion
ately diminished those disturbing infu-
ences which, as Bossuet told gentlemen
of their stamp at the Court of the Grand
Monarque, it is impossible to shut ont
altogether. When all your family circle
is comprised within your coat, and your
whole worldly movables in your
portmanteaux and gun cases, the
postman's knock has few terrors
for you. Without family trou-
bles of your own, you can get up a
plausable sympathy with those Of other
people $ and man whose small talk
flows as pleasantly before breakfast as
after dinner is sure to be generally a
welcome guest. Professional bachelors
can always give you the carte d~ pays
wherever they may happen to be. At
dinners in country houses they are in
valuable men to follow. They have
learned the bent of the cooks genius,
and know whether his or her special
talentlies in supreme or a shuttle. Even
if marched off to the dining-room in
charge of some lady who, having made a
heavy meal at luncheon. and seen no
male society since breakfast, is more in
iclined to use her tongue than her knife
and fork, yet their resources are equal
to the occasion. They manage to re-
concile civility to their neighbor with
their duty to themselves, and stirring up
some general conversation, disappear
with soup, fish or entree under cover
of the division, to come to the surface
again. invigorated and agreeable, be-
tween the dishes. Or, at the worst, they
can always avoid the more pressing evil
by opposing stolid Indifference to the
voice of the charmer, though tactics like
this are too hazardous to be- often risked
by men who hold their social position
only during pleasant behavior. 1t is
after dinner that their guidance becomes
invaluable to their neighbors. They
know the contents of the cellar as well
as the host himself, and are probably in
fnitely better judges of his wine. They
have slipped every rare and strange vim
tage from Schloss Johannisberg to
Tokay Ausbsucher, have drunk Ro-
manee-Conti in its native Bergundy,
and have known the various
growths of Bordeaux much too long
and too intimately to be puzzled
about them. Dinners are all
very well, for man must eat them
somewhere, but by retributive justice
they lead on to those fatal suppers which
sap the constitution as surely as the
deadly banquets of Borgias. But man
: not born in the purple, and who has no
special claims on society. must take the
good with the bad, and pay in one shape
or other for his admission. He must
show his gratitude for, dinners eaten, or


which is more important-must pave
the way to future invitations by atten-
tion lavished at midnight supper-tables
on former hostesses. He is tempted into
excesses with ployer eggs and medicated
champagne. He eats and drinks in
trembling, for the demon of dyspepsia
sits frowning on the crust of the pate,
and the spirit of gout dances in the froth
and sparkle of the fluid in which he
browns the upbraidings of his con-
science. ~


The profession has its drawbacks
even at its best, but its great objection
is that man retrogrades instead of ad-
vancing in it. All along he has held
his own in manner upon sufferance,
and been admitted to circles higher than
his natural one on the strength of gifts
much the same as those of Partisan
Quatorzieme. Thousands of men who
have shown az much lesser lights were
just as well dressed, as pleasant, as good
humored as himself, and much more
clever. Unluckily, even such qualities
as he has deteriorsted with time, and
a course of late hours, good dinners,
and heavy suppers is an admirable
training for the blue devils. He
has no moral resources lying below
what used to sparkle on the surface.
and fits of depression become longer and
more frequent. Should he be found out
in these more than once, should his
friends, by comparing notes, convert sus-
picions into certainties and pronounce
him bore and fogy, then it is all over
with him. 1t is painful to see him on the
wane, making frantic efforts to preserve
his footing in the skirts of that atmos-
phere of society which has become to him
as the breath. of his nostrils. Once let his
econvulsive struggle be observed, and he
is deserted as plague-stricken; it be-
comes only question Of time as to when
he falls back into the abyss, and lands
lonely and forgotten on the cushions of
club sofa. He has been used all his
life to be petted by women, and, banish-
ed to the common herd of bachelors, he
is like nervous child turned out in the
dark. 4 The club table, the cut from the
joint and the pint of sherry-haply the
caraffe of toast and water-is dreary
change from the board bright with flow
ers, and plate, and wax lights, flashing
eyes and blooming compilations, and
set in seas of diaphanous muslin. The
best hope left him is to have profted by
the warning of the French diplomatist
and makes himself a master of whist
in the days of his golden prime.
Otherwise, idle and isolated, always max
ing advances and always being rebuffed
he is condemned ito wander round the
doors of the paradise from which he has
been driven. Worse still, in fit of deep