Then, sir, look at London--look what the improvers have done--pulled up the pavements, the pride of the land, and turned the streets into roads. This Muckadamizing is no improvement. Puddles for purbecks is a bad exchange--the granite grinding is no wonder--the rattle and clatter of London is at an end. One might as well be at Slough or Southall, or any of the environs, as be in the heart of the town. They have taken away Swallow-street--scene of my youthful pleasures; and, to crown all, they are pulling St. James's Park to pieces, planting trees, and twisting the water. Why did not they leave the canal straight, as the Serpentine is? Are we to come back to the days of Duck Island, with a Whig governor for it? Why are the horses and cows disturbed to make way for the people? I love to see horses and cows happy. I like to see the barracks and hospitals. I don't want to look at great big rows of high houses, filled with people who can afford to live in them, while I cannot. This is no improvement.
Then for manners and customs: in my time we dined early and sat late, and the jolliest part of our lives was that which we passed with our legs under the mahogany. Now, we see no mahogany--we dine at supper-time and the cloth stops and the wine never moves; away go our women--no healths--no toasts--no gentleman to cover a lady--no good wishes--nothing convivial--one anonymous half glass, sipped silently, and the coffee is ready. Out we go, turned adrift at eleven, with nothing on earth to do for the rest of the evening, unless one goes to a Club, where, if a man asks for anything stronger than soda water, he is looked at as a monster. Hock and Seltzer water, perhaps, if it's hot weather--wimbly wambly stuff, enough to make a cat sick, and after that, home. Why, in my time, sir, I should have laughed at a fellow who flinched before his fourth bottle, or who submitted to the degrading circumstance of finding his way to bed of his own proper discretion. But those days are past--one thing I _do_ thank the stars for--we are getting back to the tobacco--not indeed the beautiful lily pipe, tipped rosily with sealing wax, and pure as the driven snow, but a happy succedaneum--a cigar. I do love a cigar, sir; it reminds me of the olden time, and I like the smell of my clothes in the morning, which I congratulate myself none of our modern improvements, as they are called, can ever eradicate.