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 all who go
amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in
cottages and corduroy.
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