who it is. I have met him everywhere for years; we are the best of
friends. I knew he is something; somewhere in the City, but not much
anywhere else, and at all events he is no more a military man than I
am a courtier, but when he confides to me that he was once upon a time
in the Dampshire Yeomanry, and that this uniform has served him for
years, and looks uncommonly well at night though it wouldn't bear the
light of day, I begin to comprehend the entire scene.

My friend--we will call him TOMMY TUCKER, (for I have frequently
encountered him at supper, and am aware of his capacity)--is full of
information. Some of our neighbours of an inquiring turn are asking
one another who _that_ is, and who _this_ is, and so forth; and when
the answers are incorrect, or even before the answers can be given,
TOMMY TUCKER has replied in a low voice, with a view to imparting
general information gratis, that So-and-So, in scarlet and silver, is
Mr. BLACKSTONE, of BLACKSTONE & SONS, head of the great Coal Merchant
Firm; that the man in blue and silver, supposed to be a Hungarian
_attaché_, is the junior partner in BUNNUMS & Co., the Big Cake
Purveyor; and that the warlike person, with a jingling sabre, is not
a Prussian officer, but is Deputy JONES, in the gorgeous uniform of
the Old Buckshire Yeomanry; and when he's in the City, where he began
in the usual way that millionnaires always do begin, by sweeping out
an office, he is simply JONES, of Messrs. BROWN, JONES, ROBINSON
& Co., Wharfingers. TOMMY TUCKER knows everybody, and everything
about everybody, too. Who is that lady with a splendid tiara of
diamonds?--that is the Duchess of BURLINGTON, "who"--and here, in a
semi-whisper, intended for everybody's information, he tells how those
brilliants come out for "one night only," and how they will be called
for to-morrow morning by a confidential agent from POPSHOPPER's
Establishment in the Great Loan Land. TOM TUCKER is full of these