New Wine in Old Bottles

“The present movement for supplying the million with first-class literature at easy rates of payment should not be without effect on the social developments of the immediate future. Human nature will remain the same, but a wider scope may conceivably be given to its interests and range of ideas, even among the poorer classes of the community.”
Daily Paper

Scene⁠—Clare Market, Saturday evening. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hooper discovered shopping.

Mrs. H.	Well meanin’, no doubt of it, but hawful hignorant. I was chatting discursive like to ’er about them early Phoenicians what you read of in the Encyclopedyer, an’ I could tell she didn’t know but what they was a sort of spring cabbidge. Hignorant I calls ’er.
Mrs. B.	Well, that’s better nor some of them what’s stuck up on the little learnin’ they ’ave got. That there Mrs. Smithers told me this mornin’ she was taking ’ome the ’ebdomadal washing. Just because ’er ’husband bin an’ took in the Century Dictionary there’s no ’olding with the words she uses.
Mrs. H.	Stuck up cat. Semper Haugustus I calls ’er, like what them Kaisers used to put in their titles, in the ’Oly Roming Hempire, what Mr. Bryce writes of. Not that she’d know what it meant, seeing as she aint never read no ’Undred Best Books like what I’ve been accustomed to.
Mrs. B	And ’er own sister so badly circumstanced too! That ’usband of ’ers spends all ’is time an’ wages travellin’ about to mooseums an’ galleries, readin’ of Hassyrian Hieroglyphicses, and ’is pore wife an’ children don’t see so much as a pennyworf of Dante from week’s end to week’s end. Talk about neglect! I lent ’em some back numbers of the Revoo d’ doo Mondes, and they was that grateful.
Mrs. H.	There now. And that Mrs. Smithers ’olding ’erself like a Doge of Venice. It’s my opinion, I sez to ’er, that your spellin’s no better than it should be, an’ as for hinformation, why my youngest boy kows more about the ’yksos Dinnersty in Hegypt an’ the Harian Schism an’ Solar Mythses an’ the Hitalian Re-nuisance than ever you’ll get to know if you lives to be a Centurian. “Mrs. ’Ooper,” she sez to me, “you’re no linguist.” After a remark like that I ’ad to ostrichise ’er from my acquaintance.
Mrs. B.	Very proper, my dear. Same with me an’ that Mrs. O’Dowd what borrowed my Goldin Legend and aint never returned it. “Where does yer ’ope to go to,” I arst ’er. “Not to Bubastis, I ’opes,” sez she, “ ’cos I should be sure to meet you there,” meaning that cimitery place where they hembalmed dead cats. “Mrs. O’Dowd,” I sez, “you may consider yourself a Hegyptoligist, but it’s my opinion you’re more fit to in’abit a Like Dwelling.” Since which there’s been a glacial hepoch between us.
Mrs. H.	An’ no wonder. Well, my dear, I must be after getting some pig’s trotters; my ’usband do like a ungulate relish with ’is supper.
	Exeunt severally.