’I do not believe this in so extensive a sense as you do.  Girls may appear genteelly without being extravagant, and though some fops may know the most approved color for a ribbon, or the newest arrangement for trimming, I believe gentlemen of real character merely notice whether a lady’s dress is generally in good taste, or not.  But, granting your statement to be true, in its widest sense, of what consequence is it?  How much will the whole happiness of your daughter’s life be affected by her dancing some fifty times less than her companions, or wasting some few hours less in the empty conversation of coxcombs?  A man often admires a style of dress, which he would not venture to support in a wife.  Extravagance has prevented many marriages, and rendered still more unhappy.  And should your daughters fail in forming good connexions, what have you to leave them, save extravagant habits, too deeply rooted to be eradicated.  Think you those who now laugh at them for a soiled glove, or an unfashionable ribbon, will assist their poverty, or cheer their neglected old age?  No; they would find them as cold and selfish as they are vain.  A few thousands in the bank are worth all the fashionable friends in Christendom.’

Whether my friend was convinced, or not, I cannot say; but I saw her daughters in Cornhill, the next week, with new French hats and blonde veils.

It is really melancholy to see how this fever of extravagance rages, and how it is sapping the strength of our happy country.  It has no bounds; it pervades all ranks, and characterizes all ages.

I know the wife of a pavier, who spends her three hundred a year in ‘outward adorning,’ and who will not condescend to speak to her husband, while engaged in his honest calling.

Mechanics, who should have too high a sense of their own respectability to resort to such pitiful competition, will indulge their daughters in dressing like the wealthiest; and a domestic would certainly leave you, should you dare advise her to lay up one cent of her wages.

‘These things ought not to be.’  Every man and every woman should lay up some portion of their income, whether that income be great or small.

* * * * *

HOW TO ENDURE POVERTY.

That a thorough, religious, useful education is the best security against misfortune, disgrace and poverty, is universally believed and acknowledged; and to this we add the firm conviction, that, when poverty comes (as it sometimes will) upon the prudent, the industrious, and the well-informed, a judicious education is all-powerful in enabling them to endure the evils it cannot always prevent.  A mind full of piety and knowledge is always rich; it is a bank that never fails; it yields a perpetual dividend of happiness.