thorns from the path of the
unfortunate, I am strewing my own path with roses.

LETITIA

My sweet friend, not quite so poetical, and a little more particular.

CHARLOTTE

Hands off, Letitia. I feel the rage of simile upon me; I can't talk to
you in any other way. My brother has a heart replete with the noblest
sentiments, but then, it is like--it is like--Oh! you provoking girl,
you have deranged all my ideas--it is like--Oh! I have it--his heart is
like an old maiden lady's bandbox; it contains many costly things,
arranged with the most scrupulous nicety, yet the misfortune is that
they are too delicate, costly, and antiquated for common use.

LETITIA

By what I can pick out of your flowery description, your brother is no
beau.

CHARLOTTE

No, indeed; he makes no pretension to the character. He'd ride, or
rather fly, an hundred miles to relieve a distressed object, or to do a
gallant act in the service of his country; but should you drop your fan
or bouquet in his presence, it is ten to one that some beau at the
farther end of the room would have the honour of presenting it to you
before he had observed that it fell. I'll tell you one of his
antiquated, anti-gallant notions. He said once in my presence, in a
room full of company,--would you believe it?--in a large circle of
ladies, that the best evidence a gentleman could give a young lady of
his respect and affection was to endeavour in a friendly manner to
rectify her foibles. I protest I was crimson to the eyes, upon
reflecting that I was known as his sister.

LETITIA

Insupportable creature! tell a lady of her faults! if he is so grave, I
fear I have no chance of captivating him.

CHARLOTTE

His conversation is like a rich, old-fashioned brocade,--it will stand
alone; every sentence is a sentiment. Now you may judge what a time I
had with him, in my twelve months' visit to my father. He read me such
lectures, out of pure brotherly affection, against the extremes of
fashion, dress, flirting, and coquetry, and all the other dear things
which he knows I doat upon, that I protest his conversation made me as
melancholy as if I had been at church; and heaven knows, though I never
prayed to go there but on one occasion, yet I would have exchanged his
conversation for a psalm and a sermon. Church is rather melancholy, to
be sure; but then I can ogle the beaux, and be regaled with "here
endeth the first lesson," but his brotherly here,