After I had arranged myself and my whiskers--two very distinct affairs--
yawned three times, and drank two bottles of soda water, I strolled into
the town. As I was sauntering along leisurely enough, I heard my name
pronounced behind me. I turned, and saw Sir Willoughby Townshend, an old
baronet of an antediluvian age--a fossil witness of the wonders of
England, before the deluge of French manners swept away ancient customs,
and created, out of the wrecks of what had been, a new order of things,
and a new race of mankind.

"Ah! my dear Mr. Pelham, how are you? and the worthy Lady Frances, your
mother, and your excellent father, all well?--I'm delighted to hear it.
Russelton," continued Sir Willoughby, turning to a middle-aged man, whose
arm he held, "you remember Pelham--true Whig--great friend of
Sheridan's?--let me introduce his son to you. Mr. Russelton, Mr. Pelham;
Mr. Pelham, Mr. Russelton."

At the name of the person thus introduced to me, a thousand recollections
crowded upon my mind; the contemporary and rival of Napoleon--the
autocrat of the great world of fashion and cravats--the mighty genius
before whom aristocracy had been humbled and ton abashed--at whose nod
the haughtiest noblesse of Europe had quailed--who had introduced, by a
single example, starch into neckcloths, and had fed the pampered appetite
of his boot-tops on champagne--whose coat and whose friend were cut with
an equal grace--and whose name was connected with every triumph that the
world's great virtue of audacity could achieve--the illustrious, the
immortal Russelton, stood before me. I recognised in him a congenial,
though a superior spirit, and I bowed with a profundity of veneration,
with which no other human being has ever inspired me.