Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/193

Rh to the rules of honesty and decency. She was neither one of your precise prudes, nor one of your fantastical old belles, that dress themselves like girls of fifteen: as she neither wore a ruff, forehead cloth, nor high crowned hat, so she had laid aside feathers, flowers, and crimped ribands, in her headdress, furbelow-scarfs, and hoop-petticoats. She scorned to patch and paint, yet she loved to keep her hands and her face clean. Though she wore no flaunting laced ruffles, she would not keep herself in a constant sweat with greasy flannel: though her hair was not stuck with jewels, she was not ashamed of a diamond cross; she was not like some ladies, hung about with toys and trinkets, tweezer-cases, pocket glasses, and essence bottles; she used only a gold watch and an almanack, to mark the hours and the holidays.

Her furniture was neat and genteel, well fancied with a bon goust. As she affected not the grandeur of a state with a canopy, she thought there was no offence in an elbowchair; she had laid aside your carving, gilding, and japanwork, as being too apt to gather dirt; but she never could be prevailed upon to part with plain wainscot and clean hangings. There are some ladies, that affect to smell a stink in every thing; they are always highly perfumed, and continually burning frankincense in their rooms; she was above such affectation, yet she never would lay aside the use of brooms and scrubbing-brushes, and scrupled not to lay her linen in fresh lavender.

She was no less genteel in her behaviour, wellbred, without affectation, in the due mean between one of your affected curt'sying pieces of formality, and your romps that have no regard to the common rules of civility. There are some ladies that affect a mighty