Oh, a many-thonged
whip is yours, my genteel brother.
The slaves of fashion are the next to pass beneath me in review.
They are dressed and curled with infinite pains. The liveried,
pampered footman these, kept more for show than use; but their
senseless tasks none the less labour to them. Here must they come
every day, merry or sad. By this gravel path and no other must they
walk; these phrases shall they use when they speak to one another.
For an hour they must go slowly up and down upon a bicycle from Hyde
Park Corner to the Magazine and back. And these clothes must they
wear; their gloves of this colour, their neck-ties of this pattern.
In the afternoon they must return again, this time in a carriage,
dressed in another livery, and for an hour they must pass slowly to
and fro in foolish procession. For dinner they must don yet another
livery, and after dinner they must stand about at dreary social
functions till with weariness and boredom their heads feel dropping
from their shoulders.
With the evening come the slaves back from their work: barristers,
thinking out their eloquent appeals; school-boys, conning their
dog-eared grammars; City men, planning their schemes; the wearers of
motley, cudgelling their poor brains for fresh wit with which to
please their master; shop boys and shop girls, silent now as,
together, they plod homeward; the artisan; the labourer.
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