Rhine. Men go into jail, not because they steal, but because they did
not steal enough.

Again: excessive fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a
factory from which has come forth more hollow pretences, and unmeaning
flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the Lowell Mills ever turned out
shawls and garments.

Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has made society insincere.
You know not what to believe. When people ask you to come, you do
not know whether or not they want you to come. When they send their
regards, you do not know whether it is an expression of their heart,
or an external civility. We have learned to take almost everything at
a discount. Word is sent, "Not at home," when they are only too lazy
to dress themselves. They say, "The furnace has just gone out," when
in truth they have had no fire in it all winter. They apologize
for the unusual barrenness of their table, when they never live any
better. They decry their most luxurious entertainments, to win a
shower of approval. They apologize for their appearance, as though it
were unusual, when always at home they look just so. They would make
you believe that some nice sketch on the wall was the work of a master
painter. "It was an heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a castle;
and a duke gave it to their grandfather." People who will lie about
nothing else, will lie about a picture. On a small income we must make
the world believe that we are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat,
a counterfeit, and a sham.

Few persons are really natural. When I say this, I do not mean to slur
cultured manners. It is right that we should have more admiration for
the sculptured marble than for the unhewn block of the quarry. From