be costly in these; if,
in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of it; if she
purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the
useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable,
he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If
he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly
amusements: if he find her love of gratification to be bounded only by
her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the trappings
of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may be pretty
sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her hand
into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the sooner
he does it, the better.

Some of the indications of extravagance in a lady are ear-rings,
broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds, (real or mock,) and
nearly all the ornaments which women put upon their persons.

These things may be more proper in _palaces_, or in scenes resembling
palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst people in the
middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to show that
poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the mean,
tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life, they are the
sure indications of a disposition that will always be straining at what
it can never attain.

To marry a girl of this disposition is really self-destruction. You
never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she
will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that,
she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will
torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still there will be
somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as long as
this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that
she could never be at the _top_; that she must stop at some point short
of that; and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much
thrown away. But, reason and broaches and bracelets seldom go in
company. The girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is
disfigured and not beautified by parcels of brass and tin, or even gold
and silver, as well to _regret_, if she dare not _oppose_ the tyranny
of absurd fashions, is not entitled to a full measure of the confidence
of any individual.

10. PERSONAL NEATNESS.

There never yet was, and there never will be s