The Journal of a Disappointed Man

"Try the other end," repeated the young man, smiling blandly. I blushed, and immediately recovered my balance, and even related my knowledge of pipes fitted to carry similar plugs.... During lunch (at which we sat alone) after sundry visits to the top of the stairs to shout down to the kitchen, he announced that he thought it wasn't last night's affair after all which was annoying the Cook (he got home late without a latch-key)--it was because he called her "Cook" instead of Mrs. Austin. He smiled serenely and decided to indulge Mrs. A., his indulgent attitude betraying an objectionable satisfaction with the security of his own unassailable social status. There was a trace of gratification at the little compliment secreted in the Cook's annoyance. She wanted Mr. Charles to call her Mrs. Austin, forsooth. Very well! and he smiled down on the little weakness de haute en bas. I enjoyed this little experience. Turning it over in my mind (as the housemaid says when she decides to stay on) I have come to the conclusion that the social parvenu is not such a vulgar fellow after all. He may be a bore--particularly if he sits with his finger tips apposed over a spherical paunch, festooned with a gold chain, and keeps on relating in extenso how once he gummed labels on blacking bottles. Often enough he is a smug fellow, yet, truth to tell, we all feel a little interested in him. He is a traveller from an antique land, and we sometimes like to listen to his tales of adventure and all he has come through. He has traversed large territories of human experience, he has met strange folk and lodged in strange caravanserai. Similarly with the man who has come down in the world--the fool, the drunkard, the embezzler--he may bore us with his maudlin sympathy with himself yet his stories hold us. It must be a fine experience within the limits of a single life to traverse the whole keyboard of our social status, whether up or down. I should like to be a peer who grinds a barrel organ or (better still) a one-time organ-grinder who now lives in Park Lane. It must be very dull to remain stationary--once a peer always a peer.