The facility wherewith a busy-minded person, possessed of moderate pecuniary resources, can carry out almost any project in London, is another great source of the pleasure of town life. At every corner a cab, a hansom, an omnibus, an underground station, or a penny steamboat, is ready to convey him rapidly and securely to any part of the vast area; and a post-pillar or post-office or telegraph office, to forward his letter or card or telegram. He has acquired the privilege of Briareus for doing the work of a hundred hands, while the scores of penny and half-penny newspapers give him the benefit of the hundred eyes of Argus to see how to do it. Not many people seem to notice wherein the last and greatest of London pleasures, that of London society, has its special attraction. It is contrasted with the very best society which the Country can ever afford, by offering the charm of the _imprévu_. There are always indefinite possibilities of the most delightful and interesting new acquaintances or of the renewal of old friendships in London: whereas even in the most brilliant circles in the country we are aware, before we enter a house, that our host’s choice of our fellow-guests must have lain within a very narrow and restricted circle, and that, if a stranger should happily have fallen from the skies into the neighborhood, his advent would have been proclaimed in our note of invitation. Now it is much more piquant to meet an agreeable person unexpectedly than by formal rendezvous; and, for that large proportion of mankind who are not particularly agreeable, it is still more essential that they should be presented freshly to our acquaintance. Other things being equal, a Stranger Bore is never half so great a bore as a Familiar Bore, of whose boredom we have already had intimate and painful experience. There yet hangs about the Stranger Bore somewhat of the mists of early day, and we are a little while in piercing them and thoroughly deciding that he _is_ a bore and nothing better. Often, indeed, for the first hour or two of acquaintanceship, he fails to reveal himself in his true colors, and makes remarks and tells anecdotes the dulness of which we shall only thoroughly recognize when we have heard them repeated on twenty other occasions. With our own Familiar Bore no illusion is possible. The moment we see him enter the room, we know everything that is going to be said for the rest of the evening, and Hope itself escapes out of Pandora’s box. Thus, even if there were proportionately as many bores in London as in the provinces, we should still, in town, enjoy a constant change of them, which would considerably lighten the burden. This, however, is very far from being the case; and the stupid wives of clever men and the dull husbands of clever wives, who alone smuggle into the inner coteries (few people having the effrontery to omit them in their invitations), are so far rubbed up and instructed in the best means of concealing their