At a private school he could
recollect the master's wife stroking his pretty curls and treating him
furtively to goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing as
he swaggered over the grass-plat; old men at clubs would make way for him
and fawn on him--not your mere pique-assiettes and penniless parasites,
but most respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen
themselves of good station, who respected this young gentleman as one of
the institutions of their country, and the admired wisdom of the nation
that set him to legislate over us. When Lord Farintosh walked the streets
at night, he felt himself like Haroun Alraschid--(that is, he would have
felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)--a monarch in
disguise affably observing and promenading the city. And let us be sure
there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for him and run
the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with scores of men in
life who neither flattered him nor would suffer his airs; but he did not
like the company of such, or for the sake of truth undergo the ordeal of
being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally speaking.
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