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Sir Lucius. Upon my conscience, Mr. Acres, your valor has oozed away with a vengeance!

Acres. Not in the least! odds backs and abettors! I'll be your second with all my heart-and if you should get a quietus, you may command me entirely. I'll get you snug lying in the Abbey here; or pickle you, and send you over to Blunderbuss Hall, or anything of the kind, with the greatest pleasure.

Sir Lucius. Pho, pho! you are little better than a coward.

Acres. Mind, gentlemen, he calls me a coward; coward was the word, by my valor!

Sir Lucius. Well, sir?

Acres. Very well, sir. (Gently.) Look ye, Sir Lucius, 't isn't that I mind the word coward. Coward may be said in a joke; but if you had called me a poltroon, odds daggers and balls!

Sir Lucius. (Sternly.) Well, sir?

Acres. I should have thought you a very ill-bred man.
Sir Lucius. Pho! you are beneath my notice.
Acres. I'm very glad of it.

Captain Absolute. Nay, Sir Lucius, you can't have a better second than my friend Acres. He is a most determined dog-called in the country Fighting Bob. He generally kills a man a week-don't you, Bob?

Acres. Ay-at home!

THE SCANDAL CLASS MEETS.

From the School for Scandal.'

SCENE. A room in LADY SNEERWELL'S house.

LADY

SNEERWELL, MRS. CANDOUR, CRABTREE, SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE, and JOSEPH SURFACE discovered.

Lady Sneerwell. Nay, positively we will hear it.
Joseph Surface. Yes, yes, the epigram; by all means.
Sir Benjamin. Oh, plague on 't, uncle! 't is mere non-

sense.

Crabtree. No, no; 'fore Gad, very clever for an extempore!

Sir Benjamin. But, ladies, you should be acquainted with the circumstance. You must know that one day last week, as Lady Betty Curricle was taking the dust in Hyde Park, in a sort of duodecimo phaeton, she desired me to write some verses on her ponies; upon which I took out my pocket-book, and in one moment produced the following:

Sure never were seen two such beautiful ponies
Other horses are clowns, but these macaronies;
To give them this title I'm sure can't be wrong,
Their legs are so slim and their tails are so long.

Crabtree. There, ladies: done in the smack of a whip, and on horseback too.

Joseph Surface. A very Phoebus, mounted-indeed, Sir Benjamin!

Sir Benjamin. O dear, sir! trifles-trifles.

Enter LADY TEAZLE and MARIA.

Mrs. Candour. I must have a copy.

Lady Sneerwell. Lady Teazle, I hope we shall see Sir Peter.

Lady Teazle. I believe he'll wait on your Ladyship presently.

Lady Sneerwell. Maria, my love, you look grave. Come, you shall sit down to piquet with Mr. Surface.

Maria. I take very little pleasure in cards; however, I'll do as your Ladyship pleases.

Lady Teazle. (Aside.) (Aside.) I am surprised Mr. Surface should sit down with her; I thought he would have embraced this opportunity of speaking to me before Sir Peter

came.

Mrs. Candour. Now I'll die; but you are scandalous, I'll forswear your society.

Lady Teazle. What's the matter, Mrs. Candour?

Mrs. Candour. They'll not allow our friend Miss Vermilion to be handsome.

Lady Sneerwell. Oh, surely she is a pretty woman.
Crabtree. I am very glad you think so, ma'am.
Mrs. Candour. She has a charming fresh color.

1 Macaronies, an allusion to the "Italomanic" dandies of the day.

Lady Teazle. Yes, when it is fresh put on.

Mrs. Candour. O fie! I'll swear her color is natural:

I have seen it come and go!

Lady Teazle. I dare swear you have, ma'am: it goes off at night, and comes again in the morning.

Sir Benjamin. True, ma'am: it not only comes and goes, but what's more, egad, her maid can fetch and carry it!

Mrs. Candour. Ha! ha! ha! how I hate to hear you talk so! But surely, now, her sister is or was very hand

some.

Crabtree. Who? Mrs. Evergreen? O Lord! she's sixand-fifty if she's an hour!

Mrs. Candour. Now positively you wrong her: fiftytwo or fifty-three is the utmost-and I don't think she looks more.

Sir Benjamin. Ah! there's no judging by her looks, unless one could see her face.

Lady Sneerwell. Well, well, if Mrs. Evergreen does take some pains to repair the ravages of time, you must allow she effects it with great ingenuity; and surely that's better than the careless manner in which the widow Ochre calks her wrinkles.

Sir Benjamin. Nay, now, Lady Sneerwell, you are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 't is not that she paints so ill; but when she has finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head is modern, though the trunk 's antique.

Crabtree. Ha! ha! ha! Well said, nephew!

Mrs. Candour. Ha! ha! ha! Well, you make me laugh; but I vow I hate you for it. What do you think of Miss Simper?

Sir Benjamin. Why, she has very pretty teeth.

Lady Teazle. Yes; and on that account, when she is neither speaking nor laughing (which very seldom happens), she never absolutely shuts her mouth, but leaves it always ajar, as it were-thus. (Shows her teeth.)

Mrs. Candour. How can you be so ill-natured? Lady Teazle. Nay, I allow even that's better than the pains Mrs. Prim takes to conceal her losses in front. She draws her mouth till it positively resembles the aperture

of a poor's-box, and all her words appear to slide out edgewise, as it were thus: "how do you do, madam? Yes, madam." (Mimics.) Lady Sneerwell. Very well, Lady Teazle: I see you can be a little severe.

Lady Teazle. In defense of a friend it is but justice. But here comes Sir Peter to spoil our pleasantry.

Sir Peter.

Enter SIR PETER TEAZLE.

Ladies, your most obedient.—(Aside.) Mercy on me, here is the whole set! a character dead at every word, I suppose.

Mrs. Candour. I am rejoiced you are come, Sir Peter. They have been so censorious; and Lady Teazle as bad as any one.

Sir Peter. That must be very distressing to you, indeed, Mrs. Candour.

Mrs. Candour. Oh, they will allow good qualities to nobody; not even good-nature to our friend Mrs. Pursy. Lady Teazle. What, the fat dowager who was at Mrs. Quadrille's last night?

Mrs. Candour. Nay, her bulk is her misfortune; and when she takes so much pains to get rid of it, you ought not to reflect on her.

Lady Sneerwell. That's very true, indeed.

Lady Teazle. Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey; laces herself by pulleys; and often, in the hottest noon in summer, you may see her on a little squat pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's, and puffing round the Ring on a full trot.

Mrs. Candour. I thank you, Lady Teazle, for defending her.

Sir Peter. Yes, a good defense, truly.

Mrs. Candour. Truly, Lady Teazle is as censorious as Miss Sallow.

Crabtree. Yes; and she is a curious being to pretend to be censorious,—an awkward gawky, without any one good point under heaven.

Mrs. Candour. Positively you shall not be so very severe. Miss Sallow is a near relation of mine by marriage: and as for her person, great allowance is to be made; for

let me tell you, a woman labors under many disadvantages who tries to pass for a girl of six-and-thirty.

Lady Sneerwell. Though, surely, she is handsome still; and for the weakness in her eyes, considering how much she reads by candle-light, it is not to be wondered at.

Mrs. Candour. True; and then as to her manner: upon my word I think it is particularly graceful, considering she never had the least education; for you know her mother was a Welsh milliner, and her father a sugarbaker at Bristol.

Sir Benjamin. Ah! you are both of you too good-natured!

Sir Peter. (Aside.) Yes, damned good-natured! This their own relation! mercy on me!

Mrs. Candour. For my part, I own I cannot bear to hear a friend ill spoken of.

Sir Peter. No, to be sure!

Sir Benjamin. Oh! you are of a moral turn. Mrs. Candour and I can sit for an hour and hear Lady Stucco talk sentiment.

Lady Teazle. Nay, I vow Lady Stucco is very well with the dessert after dinner; for she's just like the French fruit one cracks for mottoes,-made up of paint and proverb.

Mrs. Candour. Well, I will never join in ridiculing a friend; and so I constantly tell my cousin Ogle,—and you all know what pretensions she has to be critical on beauty. Crabtree. Oh, to be sure! she has herself the oddest countenance that ever was seen; 't is a collection of features from all the different countries of the globe. Sir Benjamin. So she has, indeed-an Irish front. Crabtree. Caledonian locks

Sir Benjamin. Dutch nose

Crabtree. Austrian lips

Sir Benjamin. Complexion of a Spaniard—
Crabtree. And teeth à la Chinoise-

Sir Benjamin. In short, her face resembles a table d'hote at Spa, where no two guests are of a nation

Crabtree. Or a congress at the close of a general war, wherein all the members, even to her eyes, appear to have a different interest; and her nose and chin are the only parties likely to join issue.

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