expense in a moderate attention to the prevailing forms and colours of
the time,--for bonnets and gowns do not, alas, last for ever. What I
mean to deprecate is the laying aside any one of these, which is
suitable in every other respect, lest it should reveal the secret of
your having expended nothing upon dress during this season. Remember how
many indulgences to your generous nature would be procured by the price
of, a fashionable gown or bonnet, and your feelings will provide a
strong support to your duty. Another way in which you may successfully
practise economy is by taking care of your clothes, having them repaired
in proper time, and neither exposing them to sun or rain unnecessarily.
A ten-guinea gown may be sacrificed in half an hour, and the indolence
of your disposition would lead you to prefer this sacrifice to the
trouble of taking any preservatory precautions, or thinking about the
matter at all. Is this right? Even if you can procure money to satisfy
the demands of mere carelessness, are you acting as a faithful steward
by thus expending it? I willingly grant to you that some women are so
wealthy, placed in situations requiring so much representation, that it
would be degrading to them to take much thought about any thing but the
beauty and fashion of their clothes; and that an anxiety on their part
about the preservation of, to them, trifles would indicate meanness and
parsimoniousness. Their office is to encourage trade by a lavish
expenditure, conformable to the rank in life in which God has placed
them. Happy are they if this wealth do not become a temptation too hard
to be overcome! Happier those from whom such temptations, denounced in
the word of God more strongly than any other, are entirely averted!

This is your position; and as much as it is the duty of the very wealthy
to expend proportionally upon their dress, so is it yours to be
scrupulously economical, and to bring down your aspiring thoughts from
the regions of poetry and romance to the homely duties of mending and