ABOUT BUYING A HORSE. 



13 



innate snobbism, and he will reply, most good-naturedly, 

 " I think, Sir, you mistake me for some other gentleman." 

 He will not add " I am not a Lord," because to do so would 

 be to let himself down too suddenly from the pedestal where 

 you had placed him. After this the conversation will flow 

 easily, and you'll have made a friend of him for life. When 

 he re-enters the bosom of his family, hell say to his wife, 

 " Fancy, Eliza, I was taken for Lord Wunborough to-day. 

 Absurd, wasn't it?" His wife won't see anything absurd in 

 it, and, on the whole, depend upon it that, in this case, 

 you've put husband and wife in a good temper, and made a 

 whole household happy for one evening. 



Assume a Banker to be a distinguished Artist, and he'll be 

 dehghted. Assume an Artist to be a Queen's Council, and 

 he'll be immensely pleased. Assume a gentleman at large 

 to be the Secretar}^ attached to some foreign legation, with a 

 secret mission, and he'll be highly gratified. Assume that a 

 literary man would have made a first-rate preacher, and that 

 a philosophical writer would have made his fortune if he had 

 only stuck to the- violoncello, and you will increase the 

 number of your friends everywhere. 



On the strength of these assumptions, they will every- 

 where speak of you as a " deuced sharp chap," a man who 

 '• sees below the surface," one who can "read you up," and 

 so forth. And why ? Because you've struck the key-note of 

 that general dissatisfaction which everyone feels, and which 

 is the strongest reason for everyone so working in his 

 '^ station of life," as to make the best of it. 



[N.B. — The moral finish of the above paragraph is a 



