In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader

Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What
would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester's
parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous
parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat
soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the
departed came in and took their places round the darksome board. The
pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual
port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap.
Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be
behindhand when the noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under
bushy eyebrows, winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's
eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to know how his
glass went up full to his mouth and came down empty; up to the ceiling
which was above us only yesterday, and which the great of the past days
have all looked at. They let the house as a furnished lodging now.
Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and lies asleep in the
wilderness. Eothen saw her there--not in Baker Street, but in the other
solitude.

It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of
it? I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it
is transitory, dislikes roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man
who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg:
aye, though my readers were five hundred thousand. Sit down, gentlemen,
and fall to, with a good hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy,
the horse-radish as you like it--don't spare it. Another glass of
wine, Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side. Yes, let us eat
our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor. And let us make
the best of Becky's aristocratic pleasures likewise--for these too,
like all other mortal delights, were but transitory.