Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed
into impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the
leaves and freezing the fountains.
In the wild tumult of the last day--the mountains falling, the heavens
flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom
of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning
world--what will become of the fop and the dandy?
He who is genuinely refined will be useful and happy. There is no gate
that a gentleman's hand cannot open. During his last sickness there
will be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come to
see how he is.
But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through
inheritance, or perhaps his own skill, having obtained enough for
purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits
aloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor
man, and says--"Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately!" On
Sabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must
worship with so many of the inelegant, and says, "They are perfectly
awful!" "That man that you put in my pew had a coat on his back that
did not cost five dollars.
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