The snobbishness of Conversazione Snobs is very soon disposed of: as
soon as that cup of washy bohea is handed to you in the tea-room; or the
muddy remnant of ice that you grasp in the suffocating scuffle of the
assembly upstairs.

Good heavens! What do people mean by going there? What is done there,
that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the Black Hole
considered to be an agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here
seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where
you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces,
and get a look from that haggard and painted old harpy, compared to
which the gaze of Ugolino is quite cheerful); after withdrawing your
elbow out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from which
cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you knew you were
squeezing poor Bob into an apoplexy--you find yourself at last in
the reception-room, and try to catch the eye of Mrs. Botibol, the
CONVERSAZIONE-giver. When you catch her eye, you are expected to grin,
and she smiles too, for the four hundredth time that night; and, if
she's very glad to see you, waggles her little hand before her face as
if to blow you a kiss, as the phrase is.

Why the deuce should Mrs. Botibol blow me a kiss? I wouldn't kiss her
for the world. Why do I grin when I see her, as if I was delighted? Am
I? I don't care a straw for Mrs. Botibol. I know what she thinks about
me. I know what she said about my last volume of poems (I had it from
a dear mutual friend). Why, I say in a word, are we going on ogling
and telegraphing each other in this insane way?--Because we are both
performing the ceremonies demanded by the Great Snob Society; whose
dictates we all of us obey.