Take a different sort of mystery. I see, for instance, old Fawney
stealing round the rooms of the Club, with glassy, meaningless eyes,
and an endless greasy simper--he fawns on everybody he meets, and
shakes hands with you, and blesses you, and betrays the most tender and
astonishing interest in your welfare. You know him to be a quack and a
rogue, and he knows you know it. But he wriggles on his way, and leaves
a track of slimy flattery after him wherever he goes. Who can penetrate
that man's mystery? What earthly good can he get from you or me? You
don't know what is working under that leering tranquil mask. You have
only the dim instinctive repulsion that warns you, you are in the
presence of a knave--beyond which fact all Fawney's soul is a secret to
you.
I think I like to speculate on the young men best. Their play is opener.
You know the cards in their hand, as it were. Take, for example, Messrs.
Spavin and Cockspur.
A specimen or two of the above sort of young fellows may be found, I
believe, at most Clubs. They know nobody. They bring a fine smell of
cigars into the room with them, and they growl together, in a corner,
about sporting matters. They recollect the history of that short period
in which they have been ornaments of the world by the names of winning
horses. As political men talk about 'the Reform year,' 'the year the
Whigs went out,' and so forth, these young sporting bucks speak of
TARNATION'S year, or OPODELDOC'S year, or the year when CATAWAMPUS ran
second for the Chester Cup. They play at billiards in the morning,
they absorb pale ale for breakfast, and 'top up' with glasses of strong
waters. They read BELL'S LIFE (and a very pleasant paper too, with a
great deal of erudition in the answers to correspondents). They go down
to Tattersall's, and swagger in the Park, with their hands plunged in
the pockets of their paletots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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