_Colonel Alwit._ Ha! ha! ha! So wrote the Dean in the Eighteenth Century. I wonder what he would say now! _Mr. Neverout_ (_continuing_). "The whole genius, humour, politeness, and eloquence of England are summed up in it." [Illustration] _Miss Notable._ Oh la! Let anyone now take a matron down to dinner, or sit out a dance with a pretty girl! _Lord Sparkish._ "The whole genius, humour, politeness, and eloquence of England" must have gone out with full-bottomed wigs and hooped petticoats. _Lady Answerall._ I protest that a neat repartee, or a "smart turn of wit or humour," is the rarest of things nowadays. _Lord Smart._ Save among cabmen and costers. _Sir John Linger._ Faith, my Lord, your street Arabs and gutter-snipes have a smack of it. _They_ are the true NEVEROUTS and NOTABLES of the time. _Miss Notable._ Sir JOHN, you do me proud! _Mr. Neverout._ Out on this pestilent, levelling democracy, which brings even wit to its last refuge, the gutter! _Colonel Alwit._ Better lie, like SHERIDAN, with Wit in the gutter, than perch, like H----Y, with Dulness on the Woolsack! _Mr. Neverout._ Egad! Miss NOTABLE has wit at will. _Miss Notable._ And Mr. NEVEROUT would be Echo, were he not Narcissus. _Lady Smart._ Humph! We've had the "humour" and the "politeness," now for the eloquence. _Mr. Neverout._ "CHLOE, of every coxcomb jealous, Admires how girls can talk with fellows." _Miss Notable._ In dinner's blanks, in dancing's whirls, The fellows cannot talk with girls. _Lord Sparkish._ Well capped, i' faith! _Sir John Linger._ Will the New Woman talk, I wonder? _Lady Answerall._ Nay; as she claims all Man's special privileges, from votes to cigarettes, from bicycles to latch-keys, she will hardly forego his most cherished and distinctive one--taciturnity! _Mr. Neverout._ There was a travelling fellow awhile ago who hung himself up in a cage in the tropical forests, to study the language of--monkeys. Why did not he turn his attention to the equally scanty, inarticulate, and unintelligible utterance of that Society Simian, the haw-haw "Masher"--is not that the term for an up-to-date dandy, my Lord?--of the banquet and the ball-room? _Lady Smart._ Ah! now the eloquence-tap is turned on! _Mr. Neverout._ But not like the Mulberry One's, at the main, your Ladyship! _Miss Notable._ Ah! if they had but companies to turn on talk at pleasure, as they do gas and water! _Colonel Alwit._ As it is, it comes like fountains in the desert or Trafalgar Square--only in intermittent spurts and squirts, not like the water company's never-failing service, on the "constant supply" system. _Sir John Linger._ Humph! An East-end fishmonger's comment might throw some light on that subject, Colonel.