Saturday, February 06, 2010

"Another young fellow is rich, has a fine form and manly beauty, and the chief end of his life is to display them. With notable diligence he ransacks the shops for rare and curious fabrics, for costly seals, and chains and rings. A coat poorly fitted is the unpardonable sin of his creed. He meditates upon cravats, employs a profound discrimination in selecting a hat or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon the tastefulness of a button or a collar, with the deliberation of a statesman.

Thus caparisoned, he saunters in fashionable galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage, parades the streets with simpering belles, and delights their itching ears with compliments of flattery, or with choice-culled scandal. He is a reader of fiction, if it be not too substantial.

He is as corrupt in imagination as he is refined in manners; he is as selfish in private as he is generous in public; and even what he gives to another, is given for his own sake. He worships where fashion worships, today at the theater, tomorrow at the church, as either exhibits the whitest hand or the most polished actor. A gaudy, active and indolent flower, until summer closes, and frosts sting him, and then sinks down and dies unthought-of , unremembered, and unspeakably wretched."

1 comment:

Matt said...

poor wretch. i'm nothing like him.