Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive dinner, can be jovial to order.  The wine goes round, and laudations go with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several speakers, as much as to say, “What a fellow you are, to talk;” the host essays a bon-mot, or tells a story bordering on the ideal, which he thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of; this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who dare not take such a liberty, and is the jest of the evening.

When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we drink their healths:  the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively to the door; then returning, tells us that he’s sorry Sniftky’s gone, he’s such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old ruffian, who insisted upon his (Sniftky’s) going to dinner in Bryanston Square; at which there are many “Oh’s!” and “Ah’s!” and “what could you expect?—­Bryanston Square!—­served you right.”

In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor, or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications of something like “how came you so;” the man at the foot of the table contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands’ Aborigines Protection Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his pretensions.

In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so, looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes:  at eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless, stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon, assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour, good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and leave without a friend.