Lady Malkinshaw was obliged to hold up
his head, and set up his carriage, and live in
a street near a fashionable square, and keep
an expensive and clumsy footman to answer
the door, instead of a cheap and tidy
housemaid. How he managed to "maintain his
position" (that is the right phrase), I
never could tell. His wife did not bring
him a farthing. When the honourable and
gallant baronet, her father, died, he left the
widowed Lady Malkinshaw with her worldly
affairs in a curiously involved state. Her
son (of whom I feel truly ashamed to be
obliged to speak again so soon) made an
effort to extricate his mother—involved
himself in a series of unfathomable messes, which
commercial people call, I believe, transactions—
struggled for a little while to get out
of them in the character of an independent
gentleman—failed—and then spiritlessly
availed himself of the oleaginous refuge of the
soap and candle trade. His mother always
looked down upon him after this; but
borrowed money of him also—in order to show,
I suppose, that her maternal interest in her
son was not quite extinct. My father tried
to follow her example—in his wife's interests,
of course; but the soap-boiler brutally
buttoned up his pockets, and told my father to
go into business for himself. Thus it
happened that we were certainly a poor family,
in spite of the fine appearance we made,
the fashionable street we lived in, the
neat brougham we kept, and the clumsy
and expensive footman who answered our
door.

What was to be done with me in the way
of education? If my father had consulted his
means, I should have been sent to a cheap
commercial academy; but he had to consult
his relationship to Lady Malkinshaw; so I
was sent to one of the most fashionable and
famous of the great public schools. I will
not mention it by name, because I don't
think the masters would be proud of my
connection with it.

The reader has probably been into the pit
of the opera, on the night of an attractive
performance, and has seen to what a condition
the lower middle classes are reduced
when they will intrude themselves into a
place dedicated to the pleasures of rich and
titled people. He is aware that these
unfortunates pay the sum of seven shillings each
for admission to a building in which no seat
is guaranteed to them for their money. He
has seen them congregating before closed
doors—a mob disguised for the occasion in
evening costume, the men in black trousers,
and the women with bare shoulders—ready,
when the bolt is undone, to scramble for the
places which their money has not secured for
them beforehand. They push in with might
and main ; the nimbler and stronger secure
seats ; the rest—men and women together—
stand in the gangway for the whole evening,
if they can, or sit down wearily on dirty
steps and unpossessed corners of benches,
when they can stand no longer. All around
them are comfortable boxes, reserved for the
distinguished people who can roll to the
theatre in their carriages; between them
and the stage are snug seats kept empty for
the other distinguished people who can pay
gold instead of silver. For these rich and
titled spectators the place affords every
possible luxury; for the payer of seven shillings
it provides almost every conceivable discomfort.
Has it ever occurred to the opera-going
reader that these poor members of the
audience have no business in the rich theatre,
and that the neglectful manner in which they
are treated there is, in effect, a not very
roundabout method of reminding them of
this, if they could only be brought to
understand it—a practical rebuke, unfeelingly
administered to a foolish ambition? Why
will they try to nibble at the fashionable
luxury of which they cannot afford to
purchase a comfortable meal? Why don't they
go to a cheap theatre of their own, to which
they can walk in their everyday costume,
and in which they can secure the best place
to be had for less than the seven shillings
which secure them nothing but admission
inside the doors at the other place ? Why
can't they do this ? And when will they see
that they have no business among the rich
people, and, what is more, that the rich
people themselves (I say nothing of the
purveyors of entertainment to the rich people),
evidently think so?

If these thoughts have ever occurred to
you at the Opera, you will be at no loss to
understand what my position was at the
fashionable public school. The allowance my
father could afford to give me would have
made me happy at a commercial academy;
but as it was about a tenth part of the allowance
which the rich fathers of the other
boys were able to give them, it only made
me wretched at the fashionable public school.
I was one of the outside standers in the pit,
looking at my fortunate superiors in the
boxes and stalls. " You are the son of a
gentleman," said my father, at parting, "and
you are going to be educated among gentlemen,
where you will make aristocratic
connections that will be of the greatest use to
you in after life." There is a remarkable
observance of form in the talking of arrant
nonsense. Wisdom utters itself in varying
phrases and tones; but folly has its set forms
of expression, which seem to suit alike all
the talkers of a whole generation. I have
heard that lamentable commonplace about
the " making of aristocratic connections,"
repeated fifty times, by fifty different parents,
invariably in the exact form of words which
I have just quoted, with the same solemn
assurance of expression, and the same bland
contentment of tone which I remember as
characteristic of the Doctor, when he and I
parted at the school door: " Make