_Colonel Alwit._ Faith, I could never stomach that inquisitive bore SOCRATES and his dreary dialoguists. That gay, wicked, but debonair dog, LUCIAN, was more to my mind.
_Mr. Neverout._ Ah! who of our latter-day dialogue-mongers could equal the smart and really _quite fin-de-siècle_ cynic of SAMOSATA?
_Miss Notable._ Well, as TIBBALDS, said:--
"I am no schollard, but I am polite, Therefore be sure I'm no Jacobite."
So I've not read your LUCIANS and PLATOS and things. But I like _Gyp_, and _Anthony Hope_. I vow he hath a true touch of "the quality," and he vastly delights me.
_Mr. Neverout._ Does he not go nigh to make you blush, now and anon?
_Miss Notable._ Blush? Ay, blush like a blue dog.
_Lady Smart._ Still I maintain the Town to-day cannot _talk_.
_Mr. Neverout._ Any more than it can write letters.
_Lady Sparkish._ There is nought _genteel_ in their gabble, nor truly smart in their repartee.
_Lord Sparkish._ And they cannot _badiner_ a bit.
_Lady Smart._ Like that _dear Bellamour!_
_Miss Notable._ Or that _delightful Lovelace!_
_Lady Smart._ Modern dialogues are _dull!_
_Mr. Neverout._ If our dear Dean, now, could furnish them with a fresh supply of those entertaining and improving "polite questions, answers, repartees, replies, and rejoinders," such as he took thirty years in collecting, there might be a chance for them.
_Lord Sparkish._ Or if we could send them some really modish dialogues from the shades!
_Lady Sparkish._ Faith, suppose we send 'em _this!_
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 109, September 7, 1895, by Various