ma, "where are those white cockades we used to
have?"

"I haven't a notion, Mother."

Nor had my Aunt Dorothea. But when Perkins was asked, she said, "Isn't
it them, Madam, as you pinned in a parcel, and laid away in the garret?"

"Oh, I dare say," said Grandmamma. "Fetch them down, and let us see if
they are worth anything."

So Perkins fetched the parcel, and the cockades were looked over, and
pronounced useable by torchlight, though too bad a colour for the
day-time.

"Keep the packet handy, Perkins," said Grandmamma.

"Shall I give them out now, Madam?" asked Perkins.

"Oh, not yet!" said Grandmamma. "Wait till we see how things turn out.
White soils so soon, too: we had much better go on with the black ones,
at any rate, till the Prince has passed Bedford."

It is wicked, I suppose, to despise one's elders. But is it not
sometimes very difficult to help doing it?

I have been reading over the last page or two that I writ, and I came on
a line that set me thinking. Things do set me thinking of late in a way
they never used to do. It was that about Ephraim's not being used to
the best society. What is the best society? God and the angels; I
suppose nobody could question that. Yet, if an angel had been in
Grandmamma's rooms just then, would he not have cared more that Caesar
should not fall and hurt himself, and most likely be scolded as well,
than that he should be thought to have fine easy manners himself? And I
suppose the Lord Jesus died even for Caesar, black though he be. Well,
then, the next best society must be those who are going to Heaven: and
Ephraim is one of them, I believe. And those who are not going must be
bad society, even if they are dressed up to the latest fashion-book, and
have the newest and finest breeding at the tips of their fingers. The
world seems to be turned round. Ah, but what was that text Mr
Whitefield quoted? "Love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life, are not of the Father, but are of
the world." Then must we turn the world round before we get things put
straight? It looks like it. I have just been looking at another text,
where Saint Paul gives a list of the works of the flesh; [Note:
Galatians five 19 to 21.] and I find, along with some things which
everybody calls wic