fashionable world, may bless their stars that they at least are not
FASHIONABLE Snobs. The intrigues set afoot by the De Mogyns to get
the Duchess of Buckskin to her parties, would strike a Talleyrand
with admiration. She had a brain fever after being disappointed of an
invitation to Lady Aldermanbury's THE DANSANT, and would have committed
suicide but for a ball at Windsor. I have the following story from my
noble friend Lady Clapperclaw herself,--Lady Kathleen O'Shaughnessy that
was, and daughter of the Earl of Turfanthunder:--

'When that odious disguised Irishwoman, Lady Muggins, was struggling to
take her place in the world, and was bringing out her hidjous daughter
Blanche,' said old Lady Clapperclaw--(Marian has a hump-back and doesn't
show, but she's the only lady in the family)--'when that wretched Polly
Muggins was bringing out Blanche, with her radish of a nose, and her
carrots of ringlets, and her turnip for a face, she was most anxious--as
her father had been a cowboy on my father's land--to be patronized
by us, and asked me point-blank, in the midst of a silence at Count
Volauvent's, the French Ambassador's dinner, why I had not sent her a
card for my ball?

'"Because my rooms are already too full, and your ladyship would be
crowded inconveniently," says I; indeed she takes up as much room as an
elephant: besides I wouldn't have her, and that was flat.

'I thought my answer was a settler to her: but the next day she comes
weeping to my arms--"Dear Lady Clapperclaw," says she, "it's not for ME;
I ask it for my blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season,
and not at your ball! My tender child will pine and die of vexation. I
don't want to come. I will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout.
Mrs. Bolster is going, I know; she will be Blanche's chaperon."