In the one case it
is an error, and in the other a folly. It is not enough that a
gentlewoman should be clever, or well-educated, or well-born. To take
her due place in society, she must be acquainted with all that this
little book proposes to teach. She must, above all else, know how to
enter a room, how to perform a graceful salutation, and how to dress.
Of these three important qualifications, the most important, because
the most observed, is the latter.
Let your style of dress always be appropriate to the hour of the day.
To dress too finely in the morning, or to be seen in a morning dress
in the evening, is equally vulgar and out of place.
Light and inexpensive materials are fittest for morning wear; dark
silk dresses for the promenade or carriage; and low dresses of rich or
transparent stuffs for the dinner and ball. A young lady cannot dress
with too much simplicity in the early part of the day. A morning dress
of some simple material, and delicate whole colour, with collar and
cuffs of spotless linen, is, perhaps, the most becoming and elegant of
morning toilettes.
Never dress very richly or showily in the street. It attracts
attention of no enviable kind, and is looked upon as a want of
good breeding. In the carriage a lady may dress as elegantly as she
pleases. With respect to ball-room toilette, its fashions are so
variable, that statements which are true of it to-day, may be false
a month hence. Respecting no institution of modern society is it so
difficult to pronounce half-a-dozen permanent rules.
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