the fashion then among young men as (thank heaven!) it is now, I had
not many temptations from my friends' examples in my clubs or elsewhere;
only little Dawdley began to smoke, as if to spite me. He had never done
so before, but confessed--the rascal!--that he enjoyed a cigar now,
if it were but to mortify me. But I took to other and more dangerous
excitements, and upon the nights when not in attendance upon Mary
M'Alister, might be found in very dangerous proximity to a polished
mahogany table, round which claret-bottles circulated a great deal
too often, or worse still, to a table covered with green cloth and
ornamented with a couple of wax-candles and a couple of packs of cards,
and four gentlemen playing the enticing game of whist. Likewise, I
came to carry a snuff-box, and to consume in secret huge quantities of
rappee.

For ladies' society I was even then disinclined, hating and despising
small-talk, and dancing, and hot routs, and vulgar scrambles for
suppers. I never could understand the pleasure of acting the part of
lackey to a dowager, and standing behind her chair, or bustling through
the crowd for her carriage. I always found an opera too long by
two acts, and have repeatedly fallen asleep in the presence of Mary
M'Alister herself, sitting at the back of the box shaded by the huge
beret of her old aunt, Lady Betty Plumduff; and many a time has Dawdley,
with Miss M'Alister on his arm, wakened me up at the close of the
entertainment in time to offer my hand to Lady Betty, and lead the
ladies to their carriage. If I attended her occasionally to any ball
or party of pleasure, I went, it must be confessed, with clumsy,
ill-disguised ill-humor. Good heavens! have I often and often thought in
the midst of a song, or the very thick of a ball-room, can people prefer
this to a book and a sofa, and a dear, dear cigar-box, from thy stores,
O charming Mariana Woodville! Deprived of my favorite plant, I grew sick