Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/362

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MANNER MUTATIONS.


Mr. and Mrs. Lipscome, to all appearance, are a very pleasant, polite, socially ornamental couple; everything pertaining to them is as unexceptionable as their attire, that is, when you meet them in "company costume;" but O! the difference, if you chance to behold them in undress! See Mrs. Lipscome in the morning, in her breakfast wrapper, (not a particularly neat or tasteful one,) before those rebellious brown locks are bandolined into stiff smoothness, or cast into the bondage of braids, and ere her somewhat ample proportions have been compressed into wasp-like outlines, and draped in faithful illustration of the last Parisian fashion plate,—and her mind is as much en déshabille as her person. She moves about in a careless, ungainly way; her actions are almost vulgar; her voice is loud or sharp; her language verges upon coarseness; she is brusque, nay, positively uncivil; in fact, she might easily be mistaken for one of her own "hired helps."

But observe her, a few hours later, receiving

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