me in the Busy Street; Seated Itself By Me in The Lonely Study; Jogged
My Elbow as it Lifted the Wine-cup at The Festive Board; Pursued me
through the Maze of Rotten Row; Followed me in Far Lands. On Brighton's
Shingly Beach, or Margate's Sand, the Voice Outpiped the Roaring of the
Sea; it Nestles in my Nightcap, and It Whispers, 'Wake, Slumberer, thy
Work Is Not Yet Done.' Last Year, By Moonlight, in the Colosseum,
the Little Sedulous Voice Came To Me and Said, 'Smith, or Jones' (The
Writer's Name is Neither Here nor There), 'Smith or Jones, my fine
fellow, this is all very well, but you ought to be at home writing your
great work on SNOBS.

When a man has this sort of vocation it is all nonsense attempting to
elude it. He must speak out to the nations; he must unbusm himself, as
Jeames would say, or choke and die. 'Mark to yourself,' I have often
mentally exclaimed to your humble servant, 'the gradual way in which you
have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity
to enter upon your great labour. First, the World was made: then, as a
matter of course, Snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no
more known than America. But presently,--INGENS PATEBAT TELLUS,--the
people became darkly aware that there was such a race. Not above
five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive monosyllable, arose
to designate that race. That name has spread over England like railroads
subsequently; Snobs are known and recognized throughout an Empire on
which I am given to understand the Sun never sets. PUNCH appears at the
ripe season, to chronicle their history: and the individual comes forth
to write that history in PUNCH.'

I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with Deep and Abiding
Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob. If the Truthful is the Beautiful, it is
Beautiful to study even the Snobbish; to track Snobs through history,