She seemed to be "stuffy" about it, as the young fellow John said.

In fact, I was afraid the joke would have cost us both our new lady-boarders.

It had no effect, however, except, perhaps, to hasten the departure of the elder of the two, who could, on the whole, be spared.
-- I had meant to make this note of our conversation a text for a few axioms on the matter of breeding.

But it so happened, that, exactly at this point of my record, a very distinguished philosopher, whom several of our boarders and myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of my readers follow habitually, treated this matter of manners.

Up to this point, if I have been so fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion, and so unfortunate as to try to express what he has more felicitously said, nobody is to blame; for what has been given thus far was all written before the lecture was delivered.