Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes amusement than anger—­the mania to be called “Esquire.”  Forty years ago, the title was restricted to those who carried arms.  The armiger, no longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door.  People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from “genteel society” because they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds’ Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket azure, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms.  But the luxury was expensive:  a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King’s taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they might become esquires.  They met together, and they solved the difficulty.  They conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee.  And now the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the “esquires” not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of legal claims), is something “awful!” But the process is so charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development.  Why should we not all be baronets?  Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage?

We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility, with its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change.  Bessie Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar.  A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms “ladies and gentlemen,” which had once such definite and narrow restrictions.  A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says:  “When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, ‘Them’s ways,’ I says, ’as I don’t hold to’; and she makes answer to me, ‘You better hadn’t.’”

Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names.  I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as