steal out too soon to the House, and their wives to another party--the hostess is congratulated on the success of her entertainment.” He much preferred the conversation of “Pinto,” whose raillery, unremembered, amused and “flattered the self-love of those whom it seemed sportively not to spare.... He was not an intellectual Crœsus, but his pockets were full of sixpences.” But then, “Pinto” did not quite belong to the lower social stratum above characterised. That Disraeli had not altered his opinion of it after forty years’ immense and intimate experience is shown by the description in _Lothair_ of the “reception” of “Mrs. Putney Giles.” Not that Disraeli by any means inclined to the “call-a-spade-a-spade” view of conversation. To say all one thought, to be rudely frank, would destroy social converse. “... As Pinto says, if every man were straightforward in his opinions, there would be no conversation. The fun of talk is to find out what a man really thinks, and then contrast it with the enormous lies he has been telling all dinner, and perhaps all his life.” “Never argue,” he once wrote, “and, if controversy arises, change the subject.” And he also recognised that “talk to man about himself, and he will listen for hours.” “All women are vain, some men are not.” He believed, too, in the saying of Swift, that a community of ailments is a fastener of friendship. Once when an intimate asked Lord Beaconsfield what he did when his acquaintanceship was claimed by many whose faces and names were unfamiliar, but who professed to have known him in youth, he answered, “I always say one thing--‘Quite so, quite so! _and how is the old complaint?_’” I have said that in his youth Disraeli had occasionally been in debt.[166] No one ever reprobated it more, though no one, except Goldsmith and Sheridan, has also extracted more humour out of it, as is attested by the episode of “Mr. Levison” and the coals in _Henrietta Temple_.[167] In this novel he thus moralises-- “If youth but knew the fatal misery that they are entailing on themselves the moment they accept a pecuniary credit to which they are not entitled, how they would start in their career! how pale they would turn! how they would tremble, and clasp their hands in agony at the precipice on which they are disporting. Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime; it taints the course of life in all its dreams. Hence so many unhappy marriages, so many prostituted pens and venal politicians. It hath a small beginning, but a giant’s growth and strength. When we make the monster we make our master, who haunts us at all hours, and shakes his whip of scorpions forever in our sight. The slave hath no overseer so severe. Faustus, when he signed the bond with blood, did not secure a dream more terrific. But when we are young we must enjoy ourselves. True; and there are few things more gloomy than the recollection of a youth that has not been enjoyed....”