LEAVE WELL ALONE.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1541, 20 May 1882, Page 3

LEAVE WELL ALONE.

Miss Aiißten presents us with an example of the second in that cleverly-drawn personage, Mrs Elton, who, after much ostentatious boasting about ber grand relations at Maple Grove, affects extreme surprise on finding that a lady who had once been a dressmaker by profession should actually prove to be a gentlewoman ! Wild or tame, they arc all the same, No matter whether they are crocked or crazy, Each naughty dame will lay a scheme To get into society with the ladies. Natural vulgarity is certainly more excusable than the vulgarity of affectation, the one having at least truth for its basis, the other being founded on falsehood. Vulgarity of affectation 13 in fact an attempt to cure natural vulgarity by hiding it. There are but too many Mrs Eltons to be found in the society of the middle and lower classes. What can be more vulgar than that constant ostentatious quotation of titled names which characterises the acts of many would-be followers of fashion; or than the struggles and strivings to creep into society, and the maintenance of that place when attained ; the curiosity about each new piece of gossip or scandal, ■which everybody knows, and the eagerness to retail it, which is as fervid with the apprentice girls in the dressmaking room as with Mary in the kitchen ? Thackeray has well compared such society to a ladder, which everyone tries to mount first, each holding on by the heels of the one who precedes him. This struggle for society is a principal cause of vulgarity, and gives rise to a quantity of ialse shame. If persons of this class, as is mostly the case, are of low extraction, they are ashamed of their ancestors. If they have relations lower in the social or inoial scale than themselves they will, if possible, disown them or send them to some other country, although they may have been the honey-bee of the family, and fed the drones by their charity to others. Social castigation of vulgarity is a legitimate act of self-defence. It is a part of the character, a& it is a part of the misfortune of those naturally vulgar to be also naturally obtuse. Stupidity and want of good taste are intimately connected, because the latter proceeds irom a failure to discriminate between what is coarse and what is permissible — between agreeable humor and rough jokeb — that gives ofteuce, which shows that they are not fit to enter society. — I am, etc., Casbi. TeAwamiitu, May 13th, 18S2.