Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/241

 You know, by experience, that I grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift, the description of these flappers, and the use they were of to their friends.

—Learn to dance, not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room, and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully. Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please, cannot forgive a vulgar and awkward air and gesture; il leur faut du brillant. The generality of men are pretty like them, and are equally taken by the same exterior graces. [Same date.]

—I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe: all I desire in return for them is, that they may be buckled upon your feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry you were an egregious fop; but I protest that, of the two, I would rather have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress, even at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes; but I will have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people's. In the