Reader_.'

_Mr_. SPECTATOR,

'Your professed Regard to the Fair Sex, may perhaps make them value
your Admonitions when they will not those of other Men. I desire you,
Sir, to repeat some Lectures upon Subjects which you have now and then
in a cursory manner only just touched. I would have a _Spectator_
wholly writ upon good Breeding: and after you have asserted that Time
and Place are to be very much considered in all our Actions, it will
be proper to dwell upon Behaviour at Church. On Sunday last a grave
and reverend Man preached at our Church: There was something
particular in his Accent, but without any manner of Affectation. This
Particularity a Set of Gigglers thought the most necessary Thing to be
taken notice of in his whole Discourse, and made it an Occasion of
Mirth during the whole time of Sermon: You should see one of them
ready to burst behind a Fan, another pointing to a Companion in
another Seat, and a fourth with an arch Composure, as if she would if
possible stifle her Laughter. There were many Gentlemen who looked at
them stedfastly, but this they took for ogling and admiring them:
There was one of the merry ones in particular, that found out but just
then that she had but five Fingers, for she fell a reckoning the
pretty Pieces of Ivory over and over again, to find her self
Employment and not laugh out. Would it not be expedient, Mr.
SPECTATOR, that the Church-warden should hold up his Wand on these
Occasions, and keep the Decency of the Place as a Magistrate does the
Peace in a Tumult elsewhere?

_Mr_. SPECTATOR,

I am a Woman's Man, and read with a very fine Lady your Paper, wherein
you fall upon us whom you envy: What do you think I did? you must know
she was dressing, I read the _Spectator_ to her, and she laughed at
the Places where she thought I was touched; I threw away your Moral,
and taking up her Girdle cried out,

_Give me but what this Ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the [Sun [2]] goes round_. [3]

She smiled, Sir, and said you were a Pedant; so say of me what you
please, read _Seneca_ and quote him against me if you think fit.
_I am_,
_SIR,
Your humble Servant_.

[Footnote 1: is not]

[Footnote 2: _World_]

[Footnote 3: Waller, _On a Girdle_.]

* * * * *

No. 159. Saturday, September 1, 1711. Addison.