He is usually young till he reaches the age of thirty, when he begins to decline rapidly. But the older he gets the younger he gets. Although he may lose his hair, and be compelled to have resort to false teeth and elastic stockings, his spirits are invariably of the cheerfullest, his laugh is boisterous, his interest in life acute, and he continues to be passionately fond of food and drink. It is not till his locks become hoar, his purse well-nigh empty, and the number of his years well over threescore-and-ten that he begins to droop. Englishmen will point him out to you in cafes, and say with hushed voices, "You see that man,--the one with the frowsy beard and his hat atilt--well, he spent a hundred and fifty thousand twice! A hundred and fifty thousand, my boy! What did he do with it? Oh, well, what do people do with money? There's a man, sir, that's seen life: used to have a house in Berkeley Square; has owned three Derby winners; built the Thingamybob Theatre for Miss Jumpabouty; knows everybody; has hobnobbed with the King when he was Prince of Wales; used to be hand-in-glove with the Duke of ---- and that crowd; and now, damme! he hasn't a pennypiece." All this with the air of a person who is showing you something worth seeing. It is the English fatuity, first of all, to admire the man who is possessed of wealth; secondly, to admire a man who is throwing his money away; and, thirdly, to look with respectful awe upon the man who has thrown it away. It warms the English heart and fires the English imagination to see the son of a recently deceased provision-dealer playing the prince at the best hotels, plunging at Ascot and Monte Carlo, buying up the stalls at the Frivolity at the behest of Lottie Flutterfast, and generally flinging to the winds the hard-earned and, to a great extent, ill-gotten estate of his late lamented parent. By all the best people--by all the best English people, that is to say--such a youth is received and made welcome, if not exactly taken to the bosom. Englishmen ask him to dinner simply because he has money. They are aware that his courses will not bear examination, that his tastes are gross, that his intellect is none of the brightest. He has nothing to say for himself; he is neither entertaining, nor amusing, nor instructive. The Englishman has no ulterior designs upon him; he does not hope to get him into this or that financial swim, neither does he desire to marry his daughter to him; he simply feels that it is well to be friendly with money and the man-about-town.