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212 acquaintances to select only eight hundred, it is amazing how his popularity deepened into respect. Now, then, came anxiety and triumph,—she who was asked turned her back upon her who was not,—old friendships dissolved,—Independence wrote letters for a ticket,—and as England is the freest country in the world, all the Mistresses Hodges and Snodges begged to take the liberty of bringing their youngest daughters.

Leaving the enviable Mauleverer, the godlike occasion of so much happiness and woe, triumph and dejection, ascend with us, O Reader, into those elegant apartments over the hair-dresser's shop, tenanted by Mr. Edward Pepper and Mr. Augustus Tomlinson:—the time was that of evening. Captain Clifford had been dining with his two friends, the cloth was removed, and conversation was flowing over a table graced by two bottles of port, a bowl of punch for Mr. Pepper's especial discussion, two dishes of filberts, another of devilled biscuits, and a fourth of three Pomarian crudities, which nobody touched.