In character we have a range from the vulgar, vigorous sarcasm of Mr. Panks[195] to the languid patrician banter of Sir John Chester, exercised on the uncomprehending Sim Tappertit and Gabriel Varden. There are also ironic touches in the two heroes, Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield. The most delightful pictures of those who entertain irony unaware are Mr. Bumble, Mr. Squeers, Mr. Turveydrop, Mrs. Skewton, Mrs. Nickleby, and Mrs. Pardiggle. Entrenched in wisdom, these philosophers all enunciate profound truths about life. The beadle discovers the illimitable vistas of human desires, together with the unreasonable expectation of having them gratified. He laments the ingratitude of the pauper who, in antiparochial weather, having been granted bread and cheese, has the audacity to ask for a bit of fuel.[196] “That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give ’em a apron full of coals today, and they’ll come back for another, the day after tomorrow, as brazen as alabaster.” The pedagogue learns that parental prejudice sometimes extends to an extravagant pampering of offspring, even carried so far as an absurd opposition to wholesome discipline. Summoned to London on some bothering law business for what was called the neglect of a boy, he explains to the sympathetic Ralph Nickleby that the lad had as good grazing as there was to be had.[197] “When a boy gets weak and ill and don’t relish his meals, we give him a change of diet--turn him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbor’s turnip-field, or sometimes, if it’s a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends brings a lawsuit against _me_!” The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts, inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a _succes d’estime_, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of a stupid public.[198] “It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote--the general property, ma’am,--still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.” The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.[199]