ot ashamed
of a diamond cross; she was not, like some ladies, hung about with toys
and trinkets, tweezer-cases, pocket-glasses, and essence-bottles; she
used only a gold watch and an almanack to mark the hours and the holy
days.

Her furniture was neat and genteel, well fancied with a bon gout. As she
affected not the grandeur of a state with a canopy, she thought there
was no offence in an elbow-chair. She had laid aside your carving,
gilding, and Japan work as being too apt to gather dirt. But she never
could be prevailed upon to part with plain wainscot and clean hangings.
There are some ladies that affect to smell a stink in everything; they
are always highly perfumed, and continually burning frankincense in
their rooms. She was above such affectation, yet she never would lay
aside the use of brooms and scrubbing-brushes, and scrupled not to lay
her linen in fresh lavender.

She was no less genteel in her behaviour, well-bred, without
affectation; in the due mean between one of your affected, curtseying
pieces of formality and your romps that have no regard to the common
rules of civility. There are some ladies that affect a mighty regard for
their relations. "We must not eat to-day, for my uncle Tom, or my cousin
Betty, died this time ten years. Let's have a ball to-night, it is my
neighbour Such-a-one's birthday." She looked upon all this as grimace,
yet she constantly observed her husband's birthday, her wedding-day, and
some few more.

Though she was a truly good woman, and had a sincere motherly love for
her son John, yet there wanted not those who endeavoured to create a
misunderstanding between them, and they had so far prevailed with him
once that he turned her out of doors, to his great sorrow, as he found
afterwards, for his affairs went on at sixes and sevens.

She was no less judicious in the turn of her conversation and choice of
her studies, in which she far exceeded all her sex. Your rakes that hate
the company of all sober, grave gentlewomen would bear hers, and she
would, by her handsome manner of proceeding, sooner reclaim than some
that were more sour and reserved. She was a zealous preacher up of
conjugal fidelity in wives, and by no means a friend to the new-fangled
doctrine of the indispensable duty of change. Though she advanced her
opinions with a becoming assurance, yet she never ushered them in as
some positive creatures will do, with dogmatical assertions. "This is
infallible; I canno