Читать книгу The Natural History of the Gent - Albert Smith - Страница 5

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Experience proves that pictures are the best media for conveying information at the outset of tuition. Hence, in the study of Natural History, for instance, tyros learn the animals with their letters: their hornbooks have zoological alphabets, coloured in tints more or less eccentric; and, although led away by the representations, they sometimes read “A for donkey, B for great cow, C for poor puss,” yet, on the whole, the way is a good one.

So, we will teach those not yet well up in the manner, by pictures, how they may know the Gents.

The finest specimens may be seen in the coloured “Fashions,” with which certain comically-disposed tailors adorn their windows. In these presumed representations of prevalent style, some favourite west-end locality is taken for the background; and, in front, are many Gents, in such attitudes as may display their figures and little boots to the best advantage. Some are supposed to be arrayed for an evening party, in green dress-coats and puce tights. Some, again, are represented as sportsmen, with pinched-in waists, that the shock of the first leap, or the kick of the first shot, would knock in half; and others are promenade Gents, in frock coats and corded trowsers, bowing to one another with much grace, or leading little Gents by the hand, who look like animated daguerreotypes of themselves. Well, then, these are Gents, pur sang. Observe, as the showman says, observe their fashionably-shaped hats, their Lilliputian boots, their tiny gloves. There is no deception. Observe that all their positions are evidently the result of much study; and that the greater part of them have one arm elevated, and the palm open, with the air of a conjurer when he says,—“You will perceive I have nothing in my hand.”

Of the same family as these Gents, are the fashionable loungers in pantomimes, who walk about with the distinguished females in the scanty visites of pink glazed calico, trimmed with ermine; and the lovers in the blue coats and white trowsers on the sixpenny valentines, who direct the attention of the adored one to the distant village church.