opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed
respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met
him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from _phusi_--the
ancients, and _technicon_--cups and saucers."

Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another
objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in
the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a
distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and
that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by
the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible
impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he
is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not
belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned."
If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich
man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting
patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him
good with my medicines--the crank and water-gruel!

Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes
amusement than anger--the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago,
the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no
longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his
own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage
door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from
"genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons,
instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs,
were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds' Office, that
one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a
groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were