or ceremony, she incessantly mistakes extravagance for taste,
and finery for elegance.

Her favorite examples are not those persons of acknowledged sincerity,
who speak as they feel, and act as they think; but such only as are
formed to dazzle her fancy, amuse her senses, or humor her whims. Her
only study is how to glitter or shine, how to captivate and gratify the
gaze of the multitude, or how to swell her own pomp and importance. To
this interesting object all her assiduities and time are religiously
devoted.

How often is debility of mind, and even badness of heart concealed under
a splendid exterior! The fairest of the species, and of the sex, often
want sincerity; and without sincerity every other qualification is
rather a blemish, than a virtue, or excellence. Sincerity operates on
the moral, somewhat like the sun on the natural world; and produces
nearly the same effects on the dispositions of the human heart, which he
does on inanimate objects. Wherever sincerity prevails and is felt, all
the smiling and benevolent virtues flourish most, disclose their
sweetest lustre, and diffuse their richest fragrance.

Heaven has not a finer or more perfect emblem on earth than a woman of
genuine simplicity. She affects no graces which are not inspired by
sincerity. Her opinions result not from passion and fancy, but from
reason and experience. Candor and humility give expansion to her heart.
She struggles for no kind of chimerical credit, disclaims the appearance
of every affectation, and is in all things just what she seems, and
others would be thought. Nature, not art, is the great standard of her
manners; and her exterior wears no varnish, or embellishment, which is
not the genuine signature of an open, undesigning, and benevolent mind.
It is not in her power, because not in her nature, to hide, with a
fawning air, and a mellow voice, her aversion or contempt, where her
delicacy is hurt, here temper ruffled, or her feelings insulted.

In short, whatever appears most amiable, lovely, or interesting in
nature, art, manners, or life, originates in simplicity. What is
correctness in taste, purity in morals, truth in science, grace in
beauty, but simplicity? It is the garb of innocence. It adorned the
first ages, and still adorns the infant state of humanity. Without
simplicity, woman is a vixen, a coquette, a hypocrite; society a
masquerade, and pleasure a phantom.

The following story, I believe, is pretty generally