in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lempriere’s dictionary, made them wink in a delicious drowse.  And, thirdly, in the case of a game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but admire the gawstering spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he said, and would have gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or would have crowed defiance, midway between the rails, as the express rushed on at speed.

But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to gawster.  I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion failed, the precocious prig, “neither man nor boy,” who struts about on Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having lost the shame which is a glory and a grace, and coveting every adornment but one, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are seen in our streets, with nearly half a year’s wage upon their backs, and the change on their faces—­in brass.

To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical debility.  He who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures and clanging cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his shirt-sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at the top of his voice, outside, and little more than a three-headed puppy, or a seven-legged lamb (not in vigorous life, as shown upon the canvas, but in glass and spirits of wine) within.  When, for example, you hear a man gawster about his horsemanship, you may be sure that he will never be first over a fence, unless it be some wee obstacle, which you could almost arrange on a rocking-horse, and then he will rush wildly at it, as though he had made up his mind to die; or, if his boasting be of cricket, you may expect next morning to see him miss the first easy catch which comes.

I need hardly ask whether you have known, my reader, what it is to feel yourself gloppened, as when in boyhood (if feminine, please ask your brother), you had just finished your first pipe of the herb called shag, and on your face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced, as represented in that marvellous sketch by John Leech, “Old Bagshawe under the influence of tobacco”; when you went forth with your mother for an innings, as you hoped, at the confectioner’s, and a second ditto at the toyshop, and saw her ringing the dentist’s bell; when you had carefully adjusted that cracker to Mr. Nabal’s knocker, and were lighting the lucifer within the quiet seclusion of your cap, and suddenly the knuckles of Mr. Nabal’s left pressed rudely on your nape, and the thumb and finger of his right essayed to meet each other through the lobe of your ear; when your dearest friend, in the strictest confidence, and having sworn you to secrecy, showed you a lock of gleaming hair, given to him by the girl whom you adored.