The formal couple are always sticklers for what is rigidly proper,
and have a great readiness in detecting hidden impropriety of
speech or thought, which by less scrupulous people would be wholly
unsuspected. Thus, if they pay a visit to the theatre, they sit
all night in a perfect agony lest anything improper or immoral
should proceed from the stage; and if anything should happen to be
said which admits of a double construction, they never fail to take
it up directly, and to express by their looks the great outrage
which their feelings have sustained. Perhaps this is their chief
reason for absenting themselves almost entirely from places of
public amusement. They go sometimes to the Exhibition of the Royal
Academy;--but that is often more shocking than the stage itself,
and the formal lady thinks that it really is high time Mr. Etty was
prosecuted and made a public example of.

We made one at a christening party not long since, where there were
amongst the guests a formal couple, who suffered the acutest
torture from certain jokes, incidental to such an occasion, cut--
and very likely dried also--by one of the godfathers; a red-faced
elderly gentleman, who, being highly popular with the rest of the
company, had it all his own way, and was in great spirits. It was
at supper-time that this gentleman came out in full force. We--
being of a grave and quiet demeanour--had been chosen to escort the
formal lady down-stairs, and, sitting beside her, had a favourable
opportunity of observing her emotions.

We have a shrewd suspicion that, in the very beginning, and in the
first blush--literally the first blush--of the matter, the formal
lady had not felt quite certain whether the being present at such a