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A PROVINCIAL REPUTATION. 35 A PROVINCIAL REPUTATION.

I ONCE resided in a country town; I will not specify whether that town was Devizes or Doncaster, Beverly or Brighton: I think it highly reprehensible in a writer to be personal, and scarcely more venial do I consider the fault of him who presumes to be local. I will, however, state, that my residence lay among the manufacturing districts; but lest any of my readers should be misled by that avowal, I must inform them, that, in my estimation, all country towns, from the elegant Bath, down to the laborious Bristol, are (whatever their respective polite or mercantile inhabitants may say to the contrary), positively, comparatively, and superlatively, manufacturing towns!

Club rooms, ball rooms, card tables, and confectioners' shops, are the factories; and gossips, both male and female, are the labouring classes. Norwich boasts of the durability of her stuffs; the manufacturers I allude to weave a web more flimsy. The stuff of to morrow will seldom be the same that is publicly worn to day; and were it not for the zeal and assiduity of the labourers, we should want novelties to replace the stuff that is worn out hour by hour.

No man or woman who ever ventures to deviate from the beaten track should ever live in a country town. The gossips all turn from the task of nibbling one another, and the character of the lusus naturæ becomes public property. I am the mother of a family, and I am known to have written romances. My husband, in an evil hour, took a fancy to a house at a watering place, which, by way of distinction, I shall designate by the appellation of Pumpington Wells: there we established ourselves in the year 1800.

The manufacturers received us with a great show of civility, exhibiting to us the most recent stuff, and discussing the merits of the newest fabrications. We, however, were not used to trouble ourselves about matters that did not concern us, and we soon offended them.

We turned a deaf ear to all evil communications. If we were told that Mr. A., "though fond of show, starved his servants," we replied we did not wish to listen to the tale. If we heard that Mr. B. though uxorious in public, was known to beat his wife in private, we cared not for the matrimonial anecdote. When maiden ladies assured us that Mrs. C. cheated at cards, we smiled, for we had no dealings with her; and when we were told that Mrs. D. never paid her bills, we repeated not the account to the next person we met; for as we were not her creditors, her accounts concerned us not.

We settled ourselves, much to our satisfaction, in our provincial abode: it was a watering place, which my husband, as a bachelor, had frequented during its annual season.

As a watering place he knew it well. Such places are vastly entertaining to visiters, having no "local habitation," and no "name" —caring not for the politics of the place, and where, if any thing displeases them, they may pay for their lodgings, order post horses, and never suffer their names to appear in the arrival book again.

But with those who live at watering places, it is quite another affair. For the first six months we were deemed a great acquisition. There were two or three sets in Pumpington Wells the good, the bad, and the indifferent. The bad left their cards, and asked us to dances, the week we arrived; the indifferent knocked at our door in the first month; and even before the end of the second, we were on the visiting lists of the good.

We knew enough of society to be aware that it is impolitic to rush into the embraces of all the arms that are extended to receive strangers; but feeling no wish to affront any one in return for an intended civility, we gave card for card; and the doors of the good, bad, and indifferent, received our names.

All seemed to infer, that the amicable gauntlet, which had been thrown down, having been courteously taken up, the ungloved hands were forthwith to be grasped in token of good fellowship; we had left our names for them, and by the invitations that poured in upon us, they seemed to say with Juliet—

"And for thy name, which is no part of thee Take all myself."

No man, not even a provincial, can visit every body; and it seems but fair, that if a selection is to be made, all should interchange the hospitalities of life with those persons in whose society they feel the greatest enjoyment.

Many a dinner, therefore, did we decline—many a rout did we reject; my husband's popularity tottered, and the inviters, though they no longer dinned their dinners in our ears, and teazed us with their "teas," vowed secret vengeance, and muttered "curses, not loud, but deep."

I have hinted that we had no scandalous capabilities; and though slander flashed around us, we seldom admitted morning visiters, and our streetdoor was a non conductor.

But our next door neighbours were maiden ladies, who had been younger, and, to use a common term of commiseration, had seen better days— by which, I mean the days of bloom, natural hair, partners, and the probability of husbands.

Their vicinity to us was an infinite comfort to the town, for those who were unable to gain admittance at our door to disturb our business and desires,

"For every man has business and desires, Such as they are,

were certain of better success at our neighbours', where they at least could gain some information about us "from eye witnesses who resided on the spot."