This observation is the result of experience; for I have known
several notable women, and one in particular, who was a very good
woman--as good as such a narrow mind would allow her to be, who
took care that her daughters (three in number) should never see a
novel. As she was a woman of fortune and fashion, they had various
masters to attend them, and a sort of menial governess to watch
their footsteps. From their masters they learned how tables,
chairs, etc. were called in French and Italian; but as the few
books thrown in their way were far above their capacities, or
devotional, they neither acquired ideas nor sentiments, and passed
their time, when not compelled to repeat WORDS, in dressing,
quarrelling with each other, or conversing with their maids by
stealth, till they were brought into company as marriageable.
Their mother, a widow, was busy in the mean time in keeping up her
connexions, as she termed a numerous acquaintance lest her girls
should want a proper introduction into the great world. And these
young ladies, with minds vulgar in every sense of the word, and
spoiled tempers, entered life puffed up with notions of their own
consequence, and looking down with contempt on those who could not
vie with them in dress and parade.
With respect to love, nature, or their nurses, had taken care to
teach them the physical meaning of the word; and, as they had few
topics of conversation, and fewer refinements of sentiment, they
expressed their gross wishes not in very delicate phrases, when
they spoke freely, talking of matrimony.
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