He told me that he was perfectly well disposed to do so, but felt himself greatly at a loss how to word it.
An English lady who had long kept a fashionable boarding-school in one of the Atlantic cities, told me that one of her earliest cares with every new comer, was the endeavour to substitute real delicacy for this affected precision of manner; among many anecdotes, she told me one of a young lady about fourteen, who on entering the receiving room, where she only expected to see a lady who had enquired for her, and finding a young man with her, put her hands before her eyes, and ran out of the room again, screaming "A man! a man! a man!" On another occasion, one of the young ladies in going up stairs to the drawing-room, unfortunately met a boy of fourteen coming down, and her feelings were so violently agitated, that she stopped panting and sobbing, nor would pass on till the boy had swung himself up on the upper banisters, to leave the passage free.
At Cincinnati there is a garden where the people go to eat ices, and to look at roses.

For the preservation of the flowers, there is placed at the end of one of the walks a sign-post sort of daub, representing a Swiss peasant girl, holding in her hand a scroll, requesting that the roses might not be gathered.
Unhappily for the artist, or for the proprietor, or for both, the petticoat of this figure was so short as to shew her ancles.
The ladies saw, and shuddered; and it was formally intimated to the proprietor, that if he wished for the patronage of the ladies of Cincinnati, he must have the petticoat of this figure lengthened.

The affrighted purveyor of ices sent off an express for the artist and his paint pot.

He came, but unluckily not provided with any colour that would match the petticoat; the necessity, however, was too urgent for delay, and a flounce of blue was added to the petticoat of red, giving bright and shining evidence before all men of the immaculate delicacy of the Cincinnati ladies.
I confess I was sometimes tempted to suspect that this ultra refinement was not very deep seated.

It often appeared to me like the consciousness of grossness, that wanted a veil; but the veil was never gracefully adjusted.