Not that they are, generally speaking,
very formidable shots--they often bring down a different bird from the
one they aimed at, and sometimes shut their eyes and blaze away at the
whole covey; which last is, after all, the best way. Their coming here
to pick out individuals is needless trouble. Do you know the modern
recipe for a finished picture of fashionable life? Let a gentleman_ly_
man, with a gentleman_ly_ style, take of foolscap paper a few quires;
stuff them well with high-sounding titles--dukes and duchesses, lords
and ladies, _ad libitum_. Then open the peerage at random, pick a
supposititious author out of one page of it, and fix the imaginary
characters upon some of the rest; mix it all up with quantum suff. of
puff, and the book is in a second edition before ninety-nine readers out
of a hundred have found out the one is as little likely to have written,
as the others to have done what is attributed to them."
Again--here is a picture of the guests: "Captains that have been to the
North Pole; chemists who can extract ice from caloric; transatlantic
travellers and sedentary bookworms; some authors, who own to anonymous
publications they have never written; and others who are suspected of
those they deny; besides the usual quantum of young ladies and
gentlemen, who rest their claims to distinction upon the traditionary
deeds of their great grandfathers.
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