the girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not beautified, by parcels of brass and tin (for they are generally little better) and other hard-ware, stuck about her body; the girl that is so foolish as not to perceive, that, when silks and cottons and cambrics, in their neatest form, have done their best, nothing more is to be done; the girl that cannot perceive this is too great a fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.

110.  CLEANLINESS.  This is a capital ingredient; for there never yet was, and there never will be, love of long duration, sincere and ardent love, in any man, towards a ‘filthy mate.’  I mean any man in England, or in those parts of America where the people have descended from the English.  I do not say, that there are not men enough, even in England, to live peaceably and even contentedly, with dirty, sluttish women; for, there are some who seem to like the filth well enough.  But what I contend for is this:  that there never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection in any man towards a woman who is filthy either in her person, or in her house affairs.  Men may be careless as to their own persons; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still have charms; and charms and filth do not go together.

111.  It is not dress that the husband wants to be perpetual:  it is not finery; but cleanliness in every thing.  The French women dress enough, especially when they sally forth.  My excellent neighbour, Mr. JOHN TREDWELL, of Long Island, used to say, that the French were ’pigs in the parlour, and peacocks on the promenade;’ an alliteration which ‘CANNING’S SELF’ might have envied!  This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or an American husband wants:  he wants it always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may grumble about the ‘fuss’ and the ‘expense’ of it, he would grumble more if he had it not.  I once saw a picture representing the amusements of Portuguese Lovers; that is to say, three or four young men, dressed in gold or silver laced clothes, each having a young girl, dressed like a princess, and affectionately engaged in hunting down and killing the vermin in his head!  This was, perhaps, an exaggeration; but that it should have had the shadow of foundation, was enough to fill me with contempt for the whole nation.