text:  It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host hostess or miss who are absorbed body and soul in expectation of Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize in groups about the room putting one pump out drawing the other in inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow waistcoats and talking _icicles_; the young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole--admire a flowing portrait of miss asking one another if it is not very like--or hang over the back of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies who gives good evening parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and another from some of the professed diners-out who take every opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred and "curses not loud but deep " are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky