those who do? Perhaps the best use of that book, the 'Peerage,' is to
look down the list, and see how many have bought and sold birth,--how
poor sprigs of nobility somehow sell themselves to rich City Snobs'
daughters, how rich City Snobs purchase noble ladies--and so to admire
the double baseness of the bargain.

Old Pump and Aldgate buys the article and pays the money. The sale
of the girl's person is blessed by a Bishop at St. George's, Hanover
Square, and next year you read, 'At Roehampton, on Saturday, the Lady
Blanche Pump, of a son and heir.

After this interesting event, some old acquaintance, who saw young Pump
in the parlour at the bank in the City, said to him, familiarly, 'How's
your wife, Pump, my boy?'

Mr. Pump looked exceedingly puzzled and disgusted, and, after a pause,
said, 'LADY BLANCHE PUMP' is pretty well, I thank you.'

'OH, I THOUGHT SHE WAS YOUR WIFE!' said the familiar brute, Snooks,
wishing him good-bye; and ten minutes after, the story was all over the
Stock Exchange, where it is told, when young Pump appears, to this very
day.

We can imagine the weary life this poor Pump, this martyr to Mammon, is
compelled to undergo. Fancy the domestic enjoyments of a man who has a
wife who scorns him; who cannot see his own friends in his own house;
who having deserted the middle rank of life, is not yet admitted to
the higher; but who is resigned to rebuffs and delay and humiliation,
contented to think that his son will be more fortunate.