goes into society without 'a marriage robe,' and, like that worn of yore, brilliant, embroidered, and concealing the real figure?
'We do live
Amid a world of glittering falsehoods.'
"You seem to consider it," returned the lady, "expedient for every one termed, by right or courtesy, distinguished, to play truant to themselves, avoiding all external show of the thoughts or the feelings by which such distinction may have been acquired: as if the earnestness of genius were less endurable than the heartlessness of the world; nay, as if the polished chain mail of the latter were the only garb fit to be worn by the former."
"Exactly my idea. I hold that we are the knights of conversation, and ought to go into its arena armed at all points, for a harsh and violent career."
"I do not see that we are at all called upon to pay so costly a compliment to society, as to assume a character diametrically opposed to our real one,—to utter sentiments we secretly disbelieve,—and to be as angry with our better nature for bursting from restraint, as at other times with our own inferior nature for refusing
