The next Gent we met was in the street. He wore large check trowsers of the true light comedian pattern, which appeared to have been made expressly for Mr. Walter Lacy, or Mr. Wright: and he had on a short odd coat; such a one as that in which Mr. Buckstone might be expected to go to a ball. He carried a little stick of no earthly use, with a horse’s silver hoof on the top of it, which he kept to his lips always; and he also patronised the staring shawl and cigar; and he evidently imagined that he was “rather the Stilton than otherwise”—“_Stilton_” or “_cheese_” being terms by which Gents imply style or fashion. He was pursuing a pretty girl of modest deportment, who was possibly going home—for it was evening, when Gents and cheap umbrellas chiefly flourish—after her hard day’s toil at a bonnet-shop. The Gent had not the sense to see that his advances were repulsed with scorn and indignation. He imagined that by addressing his coarse annoying gallantry to an unprotected girl, he was acting as if he was “upon town,” “a fast man,” “up to a thing or two,” or some other such epithet, which it is the ambition of the Gent to get attached to his name. [Illustration] We met the next Gent in the boxes at one of the theatres, whither he had come in the full-dress of a light blue stock, and cleaned white gloves re-dirtied. We knew they had been cleaned; they exhaled a faint camphine odour, as he put his hand on the brass rail and leant over us, and there was none of that sharpness of outline in their dirt which new gloves evince: it was denser, cloudier, more universal; and the knuckles and nails were remarkably so. This Gent also had a little stick. He lighted a cigar at the lobby-lamp on leaving the house, and pulled a staring shawl out of his hat as he whistled an air from one of the burlesques. He went over to the Albion, the room of which was quite full; and after standing in the centre for a few seconds—tapping his teeth with his stick, whilst his left hand was thrust into the hinder pocket of his coat, dragged round to his hip—apparently disgusted at not creating any sensation, he turned round on his heel, and crossing Covent Garden, ultimately dived into Evans’s. Then we thought that the Gents must be a race by themselves, which social naturalists had overlooked, deserving some attention; and we determined to study their habits, and allot to them a certain position which at that time they did not appear to have. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II. OF THE MANNER BY WHICH GENTS ARE KNOWN.