I hold that the terms lady and gentleman, like the word Respectable, have become grossly perverted, and are now merely the connotations of an odious snobbery. I would like to see the phrases deleted from every dictionary. In their original sense they were good words, _i.e._, _gentle_-man and _gentle_-woman, or if you will, lady. But they are now utterly corrupt and meaningless, except when applied to the vulgar of all ranks. The lady who does washing calls for the woman's linen. The cant term has become the privileged title of the vulgarest plebeian. An ignorant, ill-mannered, middle-class woman dubs herself Lady, and describes her cultured governess as a Person. Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for a man. Some of us are questing for those mythical personages known as ladies and gentlemen; and, like Mrs. Gamp, who doubted the existence of Mrs. 'Arris, we are feign to believe "there aint no sich a person." When the majority disagree as to the outward semblance and the inner attributes of "real gentlefolk," how can we distinguish individuals of the order? At a flower show I once overheard the daughter of a provincial solicitor remark to her "lady" friend: "My dear, there is really _no one_ here but us." I looked around, and saw "bankers and brewers, men of evil omen," with their resplendent wives and daughters, and a great number of social small-fry. But these were nobodies. They were not lawyers, or the sons and daughters of lawyers, therefore they were nonentities. How quaint are the invidious distinctions and the usages of Snobbery! For example, it is considered impertinence if a brewer follows the hounds in a scarlet coat, but a banker may wear the "pink and buckskins." Such, at any rate, is the unwritten law in some hunting districts. As for army snobbishness, it is well known that in several regiments the impecunious officer, not "up to" the extravagant "form" of the mess, is regarded as a cad by brainless, swaggering subalterns, whose expenditure on their stomachs amounts to several hundred pounds per annum. But to write upon the inflated Respectability of "the Service" would require a separate section of this essay. It is enough to say that the bullying, blustering military Respectable is usually a scion of a _parvenu_ family. The type is not only to be found in the regular forces; it is very common in the county militia and in the provincial volunteer corps. A son of a wine merchant, or some other prosperous tradesman, secures a lieutenancy in the volunteers, and soon rises to a higher rank. He is an officer, and therefore a "gentleman;" and he lords it over other tradesmen and tradesmen's sons with the air of a patrician major-general. One of these precious jackanapes once abused me for a "civilian," and threatened me with "an orderly," in a raucous tone of wrath, because I inadvertently trespassed within the lines of a volunteer camp. I said: "Where is the orderly? I'll wait for