with a four-pronged fork?



CHAPTER I--THE SNOB PLAYFULLY DEALT WITH


There are relative and positive Snobs. I mean by positive, such persons
as are Snobs everywhere, in all companies, from morning till night,
from youth to the grave, being by Nature endowed with Snobbishness--and
others who are Snobs only in certain circumstances and relations of
life.

For instance: I once knew a man who committed before me an act as
atrocious as that which I have indicated in the last chapter as
performed by me for the purpose of disgusting Colonel Snobley; viz, the
using the fork in the guise of a toothpick. I once, I say, knew a man
who, dining in my company at the 'Europa Coffee-house,' (opposite the
Grand Opera, and, as everybody knows, the only decent place for dining
at Naples,) ate peas with the assistance of his knife. He was a person
with whose society I was greatly pleased at first--indeed, we had met in
the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and were subsequently robbed and held to
ransom by brigands in Calabria, which is nothing to the purpose--a man
of great powers, excellent heart, and varied information; but I had
never before seen him with a dish of pease, and his conduct in regard to
them caused me the deepest pain.

After having seen him thus publicly comport himself, but one course was
open to me--to cut his acquaintance. I commissioned a mutual friend
(the Honourable Poly Anthus) to break the matter to this gentleman as