The most refractory of my subordinates was a jackanapes about my own age, who, having once waited on the "young gentlemen" in the cock-pit of a man-of-war, fancied he had acquired very extended views of life. Among other traits of his fashionable experience, he remembered that at a _déjeuner_ given by the officers at Cadiz once, the company, who breakfasted in the gun-room, had all left their hats and cloaks in the midshipman's berth, receiving each a small piece of card with a number on it, and a similar one being attached to the property,--a process so universal now in our theatres and assemblies that I ask pardon for particularly describing it; but it was a novelty at the time I speak of, and had all the merits of a new discovery. Smush--this was my deputy's name--had been so struck with the admirable success of the arrangement that he had actually preserved the pieces of card, and now produced them, black and ragged, from the recesses of his trunk. "Mr. Cregan"--such was the respectful title by which I was now always addressed--"Mr. Cregan can tell us," said he, "if this is not the custom at great balls in London." "It used to be so, formerly," said I, with an air of most consummate coolness, as I sat in an arm-chair, regaling myself with a cigar; "the practice you allude to, Smush, did prevail, I admit. But our fashionable laws change; one day it is all ultra-refinement and Sybarite luxury,--the next, they affect a degree of mock simplicity in their manners: anything for novelty! Now, for instance, eating fish with the fingers--" "Do they, indeed, go so far?" "Do they! ay, and fifty things worse. At a race-dinner the same silver cup goes round the table, drunk out of by every one. I have seen strange things in my time." "That you must, Mr. Cregan." "Latterly," said I, warming with my subject, and seeing my auditory ready to believe anything, "they began the same system with the soup, and always passed the tureen round, each tasting it as it went. This was an innovation of the Duke of Struttenham's; but I don't fancy it will last." "And how do they manage about the hats, Mr. Cregan?" "The last thing, in that way, was what I saw at Lord Mudbrooke's, at Richmond, where, not to hamper the guests with these foolish bits of card, which they were always losing, the servant in waiting chalked a number on the hat or coat, or whatever it might be, and then marked the same on the gentleman's back!" Had it not been for the imposing gravity of my manner, the absurdity of this suggestion had been at once apparent; but I spoke like an oracle, and I impressed my words with the simple gravity of a commonplace truth. "If you wish to do the very newest thing, Smush, that's the latest,--quite a fresh touch; and, I 'll venture to say, perfectly unknown here. It saves a world of trouble to all parties; and as you brush it off before they leave, it is always another claim for the parting douceur!"