, and this seemed as a statute of virginity
against poor Jane. Because there was one lucky hit in the family, she
was resolved not to disgrace it by introducing a tradesman. By thus
rejecting her equals, and neglected or despised by her superiors, she
now acts in the capacity of tutoress to her sister's children, and
undergoes the drudgery of three servants, without receiving the wages
of one.

"Miss Squeeze was a pawnbroker's daughter; her father had early taught
her that money was a very good thing, and left her a moderate fortune
at his death. She was so perfectly sensible of the value of what she
had got, that she was resolved never to part with a farthing without
an equality on the part of her suitor: she thus refused several offers
made her by people who wanted to better themselves, as the saying is;
and grew old and ill-natured, without ever considering that she should
have made an abatement in her pretensions, from her face being pale,
and marked with the small-pox.

"Lady Betty Tempest, on the contrary, had beauty, with fortune and
family. But fond of conquest, she passed from triumph to triumph; she
had read plays and romances, and there had learned that a plain man of
common sense was no better than a fool: such she refused, and sighed
only for the gay, giddy, inconstant, and thoughtless; after she had
thus rejected hundreds who liked her, and sighed for hundreds who
despised her, she found herself insensibly deserted: at present she is
company only for her aunts and cousins, and sometimes makes one in a
country-dance, with only one of the chairs for a partner, casts off
round a joint-stool, and sets to a corner-cupboard. In a word, she is
treated with civil contempt from every quarter, and placed, like a
piece of old-fashioned lumber, merely to fill up a corner.

"But Sophronia, the sagacious Sophronia, how shall I mention her? She
was taught to love Greek, and hate the men from her very infancy: she
has rejected fine gentlemen because they were not pedants, and pedants
because they were not fine gentlemen; her exquisite sensibility has
taught her to discover every fault in every lover, and her inflexible
justice has prevented her pardoning them: thus she rejected several
offers, till the wrinkles of age had overtaken her; and now, without
one good feature in her face, she talks incessantly of the beauties of
the mind."

_Goldsmith._

THE IMPORTANT TRIFLER

Though naturally pensive, yet I