The Height of Impudence!
Impudence has many degrees. When a stranger in a coffee-room politely requests to be allowed just to glance for one instant only at the newspaper you are reading, merely to look at an advertisement, and then, ordering candles into the next box, coolly sits down to read through the parliamentary debate—when a friend borrows your horse, to lend to a friend of his whom he would not trust with his own—a certain degree of impudence has unquestionably been attained. There is impudence in looking through a keyhole, in peeping over the parlour-blinds, in spying into the first-floor from the window “over the way;” but surely the highest stage of impudence is reserved for the man who stops as he strolls along at night, to look into your bed-room window, on the second floor—tapping at it probably with a request to be permitted to light his cigar at your candle, as the gas-light has gone out.