This is an age of great aristocracy, my boy, and the name of Smith is confined to tombstones. I once knew a chap named Hobbs, who made knobs, and had a partner named Dobbs; and he never could get married until he changed his title; for what sensitive and delicately-nerved female would marry a man whose business-card read, "Try Hobbs & Dobbs' Knobs?" Finally, he called himself De Hobbs, and wedded a Miss Podger—pronounced Po-gshay. After that, he cut his partner, ordered his friends to cease calling him Jack, and in compliance with the wishes of his wife's family, got out a business-card like this:
But, to return to the women of America, there was one of them came out to our camp not long ago, my boy, with six Saratoga trunks full of moral reading for our troops. She was distributing the cheerful works among the veterans, when she happened to come across Private Jinks, who had just got his rations, and was swearing audibly at the collection of wild beasts he had found in one of his biscuits.
"Young man," says she, in a vinegar manner, "do you want to be damned?"
Private Jinks reflected a moment, and says he:
"Really, mem, I don't know enough about horses to say."
The literary agent was greatly shocked, but recovered in time to hand the warrior a small book, and told him to read it and be saved.
It was a small and enlivening volume, my boy, written by a missionary lately served up for breakfast by the Emperor of Glorygoolia, and entitled "The Fire that Never is Quenched."
Jinks looked at the book, and says he:
"What district is that fire in?"