wards him with the greatest affability, and began to enter
into conversation with him. This young lady's name was Simmons. Her
father and mother had been two of the most respectable people in the
country, according to the old style of English gentry, but, he having
died while she was young, the care of her had devolved upon an uncle,
who was a man of sense and benevolence, but a very great humorist. This
gentleman had such peculiar ideas of female character, that he waged war
with most of the polite and modern accomplishments. As one of the first
blessings of life, according to his notions, was health, he endeavoured
to prevent that sickly delicacy, which is considered as so great an
ornament in fashionable life by a more robust and hardy education. His
niece was accustomed, from her earliest years, to plunge into the cold
bath at every season of the year, to rise by candle-light in winter, to
ride a dozen miles upon a trotting horse, or to walk as many, even with
the hazard of being splashed, or soiling her clothes. By this mode of
education Miss Sukey (for so she had the misfortune to be named)
acquired an excellent character, accompanied, however, with some
dispositions which disqualified her almost as much as Harry for
fashionable life. She was acquainted with all the best authors in our
language; nor was she ignorant of those in French, although she could
not speak a word of the language. Her uncle, who was a man of sense and
knowledge, had besides instructed her in several parts of knowledge
which rarely fall to the lot of ladies, such as the established laws of
nature, and a small degree of geometry. She was, besides, brought up to
every species of household employment, which is now exploded by ladies
of every rank and station as mean and vulgar, and taught to believe that
domestic economy is a point of the utmost consequence to every woman who
intends to be a wife or mother. As to music, though Miss Simmons had a
very agreeable voice, and could sing several simple songs in a very
pleasing manner, she was entirely ignorant of it. Her uncle used to say,
that human life is not long enough to throw away so much time upon the
science of _making a noise_. Nor would he permit her to learn French,
although he understood it himself; women, he thought, are not birds of
passage, that are to be eternally changing their place of abode. "I have
never seen any good," would he say, "from the importation of foreign
manners; every