“’Tis allowed,” said Mrs. Towers, “that rash and precipitate love may operate pretty much alike in the rash and precipitate of both sexes:  and which soever loves, generally exalts the person beloved above his or her merits:  but I am desirous, for the sake of us maiden ladies, since it is a science in which you are so great an adept, to have your advice, how we should watch and guard its first incroachments and that you will tell us what you apprehend gives the men most advantage over us.”

“Nay, now, Mrs. Towers, you rally my presumption, indeed!”

“I admire you, Madam,” replied she, “and every thing you say and do; and I won’t forgive you to call what I so seriously say and think, raillery.  For my own part,” continued she, “I never was in love yet, nor, I believe, were any of these young ladies.” (Miss Cope looked a little silly upon this.) “And who can better instruct us to guard our hearts, than a lady who has so well defended her own?”

“Why then, Madam, if I must speak, I think, what gives the other sex the greatest advantage over even many of the most deserving ones, is that dangerous foible, the love of praise, and the desire to be flattered and admired, a passion I have observed to predominate, more or less, from sixteen to sixty, in most of our sex.  We are too generally delighted with the company of those who extol our graces of person or mind:  for, will not a grateful lady study hard to return a_ few_ compliments to a gentleman who makes her so many!  She is concerned to prove him a man of distinguished sense, or a polite man, at least, in regard to what she thinks of herself; and so the flatterer shall be preferred to such of the sincere and worthy, as cannot say what they do not think.  And by this means many an excellent lady has fallen a prey to some sordid designer.

“Then, I think, nothing can give gentlemen so much advantage over our sex, as to see how readily a virtuous lady can forgive the capital faults of the most abandoned of the other; and that sad, sad notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband; a notion that has done more hurt, and discredit too, to our sex (as it has given more encouragement to the profligate, and more discouragement to the sober gentlemen), than can be easily imagined.  A fine thing, indeed I as if the wretch, who had run through a course of iniquity, to the endangering of soul and body, was to be deemed the best companion for life, to an innocent and virtuous young lady, who is to owe the kindness of his treatment to her, to his having never before accompanied with a modest woman; nor, till his interest on one hand (to which his extravagance, perhaps, compels him to attend), and his impaired constitution on the other, oblige him to it, so much as wished to accompany with one; and who always made a jest of the marriage state, and perhaps, of every thing either serious or sacred!”