25 

 AFFECTATION. 



THE patience of a man of straight-forward common 

 sense is seldom so severely taxed as during the time 

 of his witnessing a display of affectation. When he 

 has to endure it for a few moments only, he can per- 

 haps manage to treat it with the contempt it deserves. 

 But to compel him to converse for an hour or two 

 with a person who is spouting forth affectation in 

 every sentence, is to inflict upon him almost as severe 

 a punishment as would be the making him walk for 

 the same length of time, with peas in his shoes. 



Yet what is more common than affectation ! You 

 may see it sometimes in the street ; often in the shop ; 

 but still more frequently in the drawing room. The 

 boarding-school Miss would have all " the young la- 

 dies" believe that her papa is "a man of property," 

 and her mamma " a lady of family." Accordingly in 

 her conversation and her actions she apes the manners 

 and doings of ladies whose parents are "independent." 

 Her tales of home are abundantly bedizened with 

 accounts of gay parties and rich dresses, splendid fur- 

 niture and sumptuous entertainments. The boarding- 

 school fare is miserably mean to what she has been 

 accustomed to at home, and is fit only for the " common 



people." She is surprised that the governess 



should think of teaching her any thing but the " accom- 

 plishments" Her mamma does not wish her to 



learn any thing of "plain work," she always puts that 



out &c. &c. Notwithstanding all the efforts 



that are made to teach her to speak plain good English, 

 yet her words are mangled, minced, and chopped into 

 vocables, the derivation or even the meaning of which, 

 many a philologist would be puzzled to find out. 

 But 'this is thought to be "fashionable", and the voice 

 of fashion is much sooner listened to than either that 

 of the governess or of common sense, if we may ven- 

 ture to suppose for a moment that the latter is not 

 always included under the former. 



But in such a young, giddy creature, whose mind, 

 if she has one, has never yet been much in request, 



VOL. in. 1834. D 



