A light playfulness of fancy, combined with the gentleness that carefully avoids wounding even the smallest, is a high recommendation in society; but to be for ever laughing is wearisome in the extreme to the spectators.

“Mr. Brown’s” advice.

I make no apology for quoting here the following passages from “Mr. Brown’s Letters to a Young Man About Town” from a Punch of 1849. “Mr. Brown” was Thackeray, I believe. He says:—

“I beseech and implore you to make a point of being intimate with one or two families where you can see kind and well-bred English ladies. I have seen women of all nations in the world, but I never saw the equals of English women (meaning, of course, to include our cousins the MacWhirters of Glasgow and the O’Tooles of Cork); and I pray sincerely, my boy, that you may always have a woman for a friend.”

“It is better for you to pass an evening once or twice a week in a lady’s drawing-room, even though the conversation is rather slow and you know the girl’s songs by heart, than in a club, tavern, or smoking- room, or pit of a theatre.”

“Remember, if a house is pleasant, and you like to remain in it, that to be well with the women of the house is the great, the vital point. If it is a good house, don’t turn up your nose because you are only asked to come in the evening, while others are invited to dine. Recollect the debts of dinners which an hospitable family has to pay; who are you that you should always be expecting to nestle under the mahogany? Agreeable acquaintances are made just as well in the drawing-room as in the dining-room. Go to tea brisk and good-humoured. Be determined to be pleased. Talk to a dowager. Take a hand at whist. If you are musical, and know a song, sing it like a man. Never sulk about dancing, but off with you. You will find your acquaintance enlarge. Mothers, pleased with your good humour, will probably ask you to Pocklington Square, to a little party. You will get on—you will form yourself a circle. You may marry a rich girl, or, at any rate, get the chance of seeing a number of the kind and the pretty.”

“The dressing, the clean gloves, and cab-hire, are nuisances, I grant you. The idea of the party itself is a bore, but you must go. When you are at the party, it is not so stupid; there is always something pleasant for the eye and attention of an observant man.”