Cuttings), she tells us that motors habitually run over a hundred thousand people a day in the streets of London, the younger folk, with the kindness characteristic of youth, merely shout in her ear-trumpet, ‘Yes, Grandma, isn’t it awful?’ and wonder when her maid will fetch her to go to bed. It is on Grandma’s data that the praisers of past time form their notions of society. She prides herself on never having been in one of those horrible automobiles: the praisers pride themselves on never having set foot within the doors of these unspeakable temples. Apparently it is for this reason that they can tell us with precision what happens there, except when they forget what they have previously written, and flatly contradict themselves. Like the Fat Boy, the loquacious pessimist wants to make our flesh creep, and sepulchrally announces that he saw Miss Wardle and Mr. Tupman ‘a-kissing and a-hugging.’ But unlike the Fat Boy, who really saw it, the pessimist has only ‘heard tell of it’ in Classy Cuttings, and with Wardle we should exclaim, ‘Pooh, he must have been dreaming.’ So he was, all alone one night when nobody had asked him out to dinner, and falling into a reverie proceeded to contrast the Sancta Simplicitas of the days when everybody sailed along in a coach and four with those extravagant times when he has to pay for his own mutton-chop, and rich folk save their money to go in the twopenny tube. This sounded a little illogical, but it would do, and refreshing himself with another drink of Classy Cuttings, he lashed out at the poker-party at St-l-n-, by way of punishing those who were not his hosts on that terrible occasion. Of course he would not have gone in any case, since he has never and will never set foot in those restaurants (not homes) of vice and extravagance. One cannot help wondering whether, if he condescended to go there, he would not feel a little kinder after ortolans and a bleeding woodcock for tea, and with greater indulgence to the degeneration he deplores, write a few pages about Progress instead of Decadence. But who knows? The ortolans might disagree with him, and he would become unkinder than ever. Possibly all is for the best. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Freaks of Mayfair, by E. F. Benson