text:  The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London and _a fortiori_ of their wives and families is to lay a tax upon social intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their dinners are criminally wasteful and sinfully extravagant to this end; to this end they insist on making _price_ the test of what they are pleased to consider _select society_ in their own sets and they consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a _pic-nic_ without dozens of champagne