34 A VIRGINIAN. 



ble, and it is your concern, whether your associates 

 are pleasant and good temjiered or no. To exhibit 

 any marked avoidance on the other hand of De R* 

 and Cheshire, because of vices which cannot directly 

 interfere with you, is to meddle with what is not 

 your concern. If a man cheats at cards, refuses his 

 debts of honor, suflfers his nose to be pulled, or does 

 any other overt act, for this, society will cut him in 

 an instant, if he were their nearest and dearest friend. 

 And the same of a woman who commits a faux pas 

 avowedly, and runs away from, or is divorced by, her 

 husband. Men who are merely stingy, selfish, heart- 

 less, or fools, and women who flirt, coquette to the ut- 

 most limit of opinion, they may despise and laugh at, 

 but they will not cut ; and rightly, for such things be- 

 ing matters of opinion and of rumor ma7/ be contemned, 

 but must not be, and ought 7iot to be punished. 

 Therefore, as a friend, I would advise you, my dear 

 colonel, to avoid setting yourself up for a reformer or 

 revolutionizer on your first debut. They would not 

 stand it from one of themselves, much less from a for- 

 eigner ; and to receive the soubriquet of the Virginia 

 Quixote would be a blow which you never would re- 

 cover." 



" I believe you are in the right, count," said Fairfax, 

 laughing, " and, at all events, right or wrong, I will 

 take your advice. Still, such characters as that I 

 have heard ascribed to this man particularly, are most 

 odious to me. I hear he takes positive pleasure in 

 slighting and giving actual pain to young men or 

 girls just coming out, as noble as himself, but not yet 

 established by the caprice of fashion. That he is ha- 

 bitually rude and haughty to subordinates and inferi- 

 ors, and worst of all, that, vicious, a voluptuary, and 

 a gambler himself, he spares no pains to make every 

 one with whom he associates as hard, and cold, and 

 selfish, as cruel and as base as he is himself. It will 



