st, a pretty numerous part of
company; and as their suffrages go a great way towards establishing a
man's character in the fashionable part of the world, which is of great
importance to the fortune and figure he proposes to make in it, it is
necessary to please them. I will, therefore, upon this subject, let you
into certain _arcana_ that will be very useful for you to know, but
which you must, with the utmost care, conceal and never seem to know.

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an
entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good
sense, I never knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted
consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together. Some little passion
or humour always breaks in upon their best resolutions. Their beauty
neglected or controverted, their age increased or their supposed
understandings depreciated, instantly kindles their little passions, and
overturns any system of consequential conduct that in their most
reasonable moments they have been capable of forming. A man of sense
only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as
he does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults them
about nor trusts them with, serious matters; though he often makes them
believe that he does both, which is the thing in the world that they are
proud of.

But these are secrets, which you must keep inviolably, if you would not,
like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by the whole sex. On the contrary, a man
who thinks of living in the great world must be gallant, polite, and
attentive to please the women. They have, from the weakness of men, more
or less influence in all courts; they absolutely stamp every man's
character in the _beau monde,_ and make it either current, or cry it
down, and stop it in payment.

It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to manage, please, and flatter
them; and never to discover the least mark of contempt, which is what
they never forgive; but in this they are not singular, for it is the
same with men, who will much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult.

These are some of the hints which my long experience in the great world
enables me to give you, and which, if you attend to them, may prove
useful to you in your journey through it. I wish it may be a prosperous
one; at least, I am sure that it must be your own fault if it is not.

_III.--The Secret of Good Breeding_

_London, November_ 3, 174