If I am a beau, I can never think of wearing a
spring-velvet in winter; and if I am not a beau, why then, that explains
itself. But let me go on to your two next strange lines:
"'And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay,
To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.'
"The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself seem sensible of:
you say your sister will laugh; and so indeed she well may! The Latins have
an expression for a contemptuous kind of laughter, 'naso contemnere
adunco'; that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in the
manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most
extraordinary of all extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your and
your sister's advice in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises
my indignation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me at once with
verse and resentment. I take advice! and from whom? You shall hear.
"First let me suppose, what may shortly be true,
The company set, and the word to be Loo:
All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure,
And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the center.
Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn
At never once finding a visit from Pam.
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