but we are wandering out of the domain of the story.” If quacks prosper as often as they go to the wall-if zanies succeed and knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and most honest amongst us-I say, brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great account, and that it is probable. Then men will walk across the road when they meet you-or, worse still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you in a pitying way-then you will know, as soon as your back is turned, that your friend begins with a 'Poor devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances that chap has thrown away!' Well, well-a carriage and three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward nor the end of God's judgment of men. “You and I, my dear reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail: our powers forsake us: our place on the boards be taken by better and younger mimes-the chance of life roll away and leave us shattered and stranded. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys’ clerks know in London! Nothing is hidden from their inquisition, and their families mutely rule our city.” They talked about them over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night.

The miserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all round the room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articled gents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. Higgs that Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and a thousand times his experience, was a wretched underling who should instantly leave all his business in life to attend on the Captain’s pleasure. “George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows squared, and his swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into the attorney’s offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was scribbling there.

Vanity fair makepeace