University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
LESSONS FOR GROWN UP LADIES.

During the remainder of the season, our hero
principally occupied himself with cultivating the
acquaintance of married ladies, and young men
of little experience and plenty of spending money.
The former he tried to teach fashionable
morals, and the latter fashionable manners; that
is, he endeavoured to persuade the young men to
make love, and the married ladies to encourage
them. But he found great, nay, insuperable difficulties
in overcoming the modesty of the young
gentlemen, and the old fashioned notions of the
matrons. “These yankees,” quoth our hero, “are
as hard to tame as tigers.”

He resorted on one occasion to argument with
a lady who cherished the most absurd notions of
conjugal felicity, “and all that sort of thing,” as
the English say.

“My dear madam,” said he one day to Mrs.
Judge Bridlegoose, “a married woman of fashion

abroad, has no more to do with her husband than
you have here with the husbands of other women.
She makes use of nothing belonging to
him except his name and his money. The first is
useful on certain occasions, the latter indispensable.”

“Why what in the name of sense,” cried Mrs.
Judge Bridlegoose, “do the people marry for?”

“To do as they please.”

I never did as I pleased since I was married,
thought Mrs. Judge; the thing is not so unreasonable
after all.

“Women are thought nothing of abroad until
they are married,” continued Sopus.

“And when they are married?” asked the lady.

“O, every body thinks and talks of them too.
They are like foxes let out of a bag to be hunted.”

“But I should not like to be hunted.”

“No, my dear madam! why what did you
marry for?”

“To get a husband.”

Our hero laughed; it was impossible to help it.
“And what is a husband good for, except to lend
you his name, and give you his money?”

“Good for? why—why—” the lady was a little
puzzled. “Why one wants a man about the
house to take care of one, and to go to market.”

“My dear madam, you put me in mind of a lady
of this town, who took her husband with her to
Paris. `My dear,' said her friend, who knew of

how little use a husband was in Paris—`my dear,
what possessed you to bring him with you?”'

“`I wanted some body to hold the basin for me
when I was sea sick,' said the other.”

Mrs. Judge Bridlegoose laughed, and was very
near being satisfied that husbands were like fireplaces,
very useful, but very unbecoming. However,
our hero, though he partly satisfied her understanding,
could not get the better of education and
habit, the best preservatives of virtue.

But though he failed here, he succeeded in another
important branch of civilization. He taught
several young men to play at cards and dice, who
by some strange miracle were ignorant of them
before, and gained a comfortable livelihood by it.
How much better than teaching French, Italian,
and Spanish; or debasing the character of a roué
by some useful occupation. In the month of May,
Julia and Heartwell were married. “There is but
one more misery I wish him,” quoth Sopus, “may
old Wingate live a hundred years and his wife
fifty.”