e that read
loudest, distinctest and best was to have a halfpenny on Sunday to put
in the poor's box.

When Sunday came it was indeed a day of finery, which all my sumptuary
edicts could not restrain. How well soever I fancied my lectures against
pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters, yet I still found them
secretly attached to all their former finery; they still loved laces,
ribbons, bugles, and catgut; my wife herself retained a passion for her
crimson paduasoy, because I formerly happened to say it became her.

[Illustration: The First Sunday at Wakefield.]

The first Sunday in particular their behavior served to mortify me; I
had desired my girls the preceding night to be dressed early the next
day; for I always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of
the congregation. They punctually obeyed my directions; but when we were
to assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife and daughters
dressed out all in their former splendor; their hair plastered up with
pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up in a heap
behind, and rustling at every motion.

I could not help smiling at their vanity, particularly that of my wife,
from whom I expected more discretion. In this exigence, therefore, my
only resource was to order my son, with an important air, to call our
coach. The girls were amazed at the command; but I repeated it with more
solemnity than before.

"Surely, my dear, you jest," cried my wife; "we can walk it perfectly
well; we want no coach to carry us now."

"You mistake, child," returned I, "we do want a coach; for if we walk to
church in this trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after
us."

"Indeed," replied my wife, "I always imagined that my Charles was fond
of seeing his children neat and handsome about him."

"You may be as neat as you please," interrupted I, "and I shall love you
the better for it; but all this is not neatness, but frippery. These
rufflings and pinkings and patchings will only make us hated by all the
wives of all our neighbors. No, my children," continued I, more gravely,
"those gowns may be altered into something of a plainer cut; for finery
is very unbecoming in us, who want the means of decency. I do not know
whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming even in the rich, if we
consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the
indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain."

This rem