gentleman could scarcely attend these elegant festivities without
devoting some little attention to his dress; and a fashionable tailor
plays the deuce with one's yearly allowance.

We who reside, be it known to you, reader, in Little Brittany are not
very well acquainted with the manners of the better classes in St.
James's. But there was one great vice among the fine people about Thames
Court which we make no doubt does not exist anywhere else,--namely, these
fine people were always in an agony to seem finer than they were; and the
more airs a gentleman or a lady gave him or her self, the more important
they became. Joe, the dog's-meat man, had indeed got into society
entirely from a knack of saying impertinent things to everybody; and the
smartest exclusives of the place, who seldom visited any one where there
was not a silver teapot, used to think Joe had a great deal in him
because he trundled his cart with his head in the air, and one day gave
the very beadle of the parish "the cut direct."

Now this desire to be so exceedingly fine not only made the society about
Thames Court unpleasant, but expensive. Every one vied with his
neighbour; and as the spirit of rivalry is particularly strong in
youthful bosoms, we can scarcely wonder that it led Paul into many
extravagances. The evil of all circles that profess to be select is high
play; and the reason is obvious: persons who have the power to bestow on
another an advantage he covets would rather sell it than give it; and
Paul, gradually increasing in popularity and _ton_, found himself, in
spite of his classical education, no match for the finished, or, rather,
finishing gentlemen with whom he began to associate. His first
admittance into the select coterie of these men of the world was formed
at the house of Bachelor Bill, a person of great notoriety among that
portion of the _elite_ which emphatically entitles itself "Flash."