DOROTHEA.


Beyond sparring and cricket, I do not recollect I learned anything
useful at Slaughter-House School, where I was educated (according to an
old family tradition, which sends particular generations of gentlemen to
particular schools in the kingdom; and such is the force of habit, that
though I hate the place, I shall send my own son thither too, should
I marry any day). I say I learned little that was useful at Slaughter
House, and nothing that was ornamental. I would as soon have thought
of learning to dance as of learning to climb chimneys. Up to the age of
seventeen, as I have shown, I had a great contempt for the female race,
and when age brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was
I?--I could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young bear
could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches carrying off
young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in waltzes, whispering
between their glossy curls in quadrilles, simpering with perfect
equanimity, and cutting pas in that abominable "cavalier seul," until my
soul grew sick with fury. In a word, I determined to learn to dance.

But such things are hard to be acquired late in life, when the bones and
the habits of a man are formed. Look at a man in a hunting-field who has
not been taught to ride as a boy. All the pluck and courage in the world
will not make the man of him that I am, or as any man who has had the
advantages of early education in the field.