whole nature becomes subdued into suavity. I confess I like
the quality-ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones.
They haven't read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better to you
when you are talking to them. If they are never learned, they make up
for it in tact and elegance. Besides, I think, on the whole, there is
less self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas. I don't know where
you will find a sweeter portrait of humility than in Esther, the poor
play-girl of King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal apparel when
she went before her lord. I have no doubt she was a more gracious and
agreeable person than Deborah, who judged the people and wrote the story
of Sisera. The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that
you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect vitality. The highest
fashion is intensely alive,--not alive necessarily to the truest and
best things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its
extremities and to the farthest point of its surface, so that the
feather in its bonnet is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and
the rosette on its slipper as clean-cut and _pimpant_ (pronounce it
English fashion,--it is a good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule,
that society where flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that
where it is spoken. Don't you see why? Attention and deference don't
require you to make fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness
(lies) and returning all the compliments paid you. This is one reason.

--A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man,--said the
Model.

[_My reflection._ Oh! oh! no wonder you didn't get married. Served you
right.] _My remark._ Surely, Madam,--if you mean by flattery telling
people boldly to their faces that they are this or that, which they are
not. But a woman who does not carry a halo of good feeling and desire
to make everybody contented about with her wherever she goes,--an
atmosphere of grace, mercy, and peace, of at least six feet radius,
which wraps every human being upon whom she voluntarily bestows her
presence, and so flatters him with the comfortable thought that she
is rather glad he is alive than otherwise, isn't worth the trouble of
talking to, _as a woman_; she may do well enough to hold discussions
with.

--I don't think the Model exactly liked this. She said,--a little
spitefully, I thought,--that a sensi