How difficult it is to succeed in giving pleasure.  When I addressed you recently, I honestly intended to gratify you by the adoption of a tone of easy familiarity.  Surely, I thought to myself, I cannot be wrong if I address my friend POMPOSITY by his name, and speak to him in a chatty rather than in an inflated style.  If I chose the latter, might he not think that I was poking fun at him by cheap parody, and manifest his displeasure by bringing a host of BULMERS about my ears?  These considerations prevailed with me, and the result was the letter you received.  But, O pectora caeca!  I have learnt from an authoritative source that you are displeased.  You resent, it seems, what you are pleased to term my affectation of intimacy, and you beg for a style of greater respect in any future communications.  So be it.  I have pondered for hours, and have eventually come to the conclusion that I shall best consult your wishes by addressing you in a manner suited to diplomatic personages of importance.  I have noticed that in their official intercourse these gentlemen move on stilts of the most rigid punctilio, and I have often pictured to myself the glow of genuine pride which must suffuse the soul of an ambassador or a foreign Minister when, for the first time, he finds himself styled an Excellency.  It may be of course that he knows himself to be anything rather than excellent, but he will keep that knowledge to himself, stowed away in some remote corner of his mind, and never on any account allowed to interfere with his enjoyment of the ignorant and empty compliments that others pay him.

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I wish to ask you a simple question.  Why do you render those who spend their lives in your service so extremely ridiculous?  That may be just the fashion of your humour; but is it fair to persist as you do?  There is, for instance, my old friend BENJAMIN CHUMP, little BEN CHUMP as we used to call him in the irreverent days, before his face had turned purple or his waistcoat had prevented him from catching stray glimpses of his patent-leathered toes.  Little BEN was not made for the country, that was certain.  A life of Clubs and dinner-parties would have suited him to perfection.  In his Club he could always pose before a select and, it must be added, a dwindling circle as a man of influence.  “There is no Club, however watched and tended, but one dread bore is there.”  BEN might have developed into a prime bore, but as he was plentifully supplied with money and had a good cook and a pleasant wife, he would always have managed to gather round him plenty of guests who would have forgiven him his elaborate platitudes, for the sake of his admirable made-dishes.  Suddenly, however, he resolved to become a country gentleman.  As there is no law to prevent a CHUMP from turning into a squire, BEN had not to wait very long before he was able to put his fatal resolve into execution.  He purchased an Elizabethan mansion, and descended with all his