4.  What they would bring to pass is, to make all good and evil consist in report, and with whisper, calumnies, and impertinence, to have the conduct of those reports.

5.  By this means innocents are blasted upon their first appearance in town:  and there is nothing more required to make a young woman the object of envy and hatred, than to deserve love and admiration.

6.  This abominable endeavour to suppressor lessen every thing that is praise-worthy, is as frequent among the men as women.  If I can remember what passed at a visit last night, it will serve as an instance that the sexes are equally inclined to defamation, with equal malice, with equal impotence.

7. Jack Triplett came into my Lady Airy’s about eight of the clock.  You know the manner we sit at a visit, and I need not describe the circle; but Mr. Triplett came in, introduced by two tapers supported by a spruce servant, whose hair is under a cap till my lady’s candles are all lighted up, and the hour of ceremony begins.

8.  I say Jack Triplett came in, and singing (for he is really good company) ’Every feature, charming creature,’—­he went on.  It is a most unreasonable thing that people cannot go peaceably to see their friends, but these murderers are let loose.

9.  Such a shape! such an air! what a glance was that as her chariot passed by mine!—­My lady herself interrupted him:  Pray, who is this fine thing?—­I warrant, says another, ’tis the creature I was telling your ladyship of just now.

10.  You were telling of? says Jack; I wish I had been so happy as to have come in and heard you, for I have not words to say what she is:  but if an agreeable height, a modest air, a virgin shame, and impatience of being beheld, amidst a blaze of ten thousand charms—­The whole room flew out—­Oh, Mr. Triplett!  When Mrs. Lofty, a known prude, said she believed she knew whom the gentleman meant; but she was, indeed, as he civilly represented her, impatient of being beheld.  Then turning to the lady next her—­The most unbred creature you ever saw.

11.  Another pursued the discourse:—­As unbred, madam, as you may think her, she is extremely belied if she is the novice she appears; she was last week at a ball till two in the morning:  Mr. Triplett knows whether he was the happy man that took care of her home; but—­This was followed by some particular exception that each woman in the room made to some peculiar grace or advantage; so that Mr. Triplett was beaten from one limb and feature to another, till he was forced to resign the whole woman.

12.  In the end, I took notice Triplett recorded all this malice in his heart; and saw in his countenance, and a certain waggish shrug, that he designed to repeat the conversation:  I therefore let the discourse die, and soon after took an occasion to commend a certain gentleman of my acquaintance for a person of singular modesty, courage, integrity, and withal, as a man of an entertaining conversation, to which advantages he had a shape and manner peculiarly graceful.