"Not for that object, Julia. My dear mother little thinks I shall do any such thing."
"And why not? A rich pocket-handkerchief is a stylish thing!"
"I question if style, as you call it, is just the thing for a young woman, under any circumstances; but, to confess the truth, I think a pocket-handkerchief that is to be LOOKED at and which is not to be USED, vulgar."
"Not in Sir Walter Scott's signification, my dear," answered Julia laughing, "for it is not so very COMMON. Every body cannot have a worked French pocket-handkerchief."
{Sir Walter Scott = British novelist and poet (1771-1832), often compared with Cooper—I have not located his definition of "vulgar"}
"Sir Walter Scott's definition of what is vulgar is open to criticism, I fancy. The word comes from the common mind, or common practices, beyond a question, but it now means what is common as opposed to what is cultivated and refined. It is an absurdity, too, to make a thing respectable because it is common. A fib is one of the commonest things in the world, and yet it is scarcely respectable."
"Oh! Every one says you are a philosopherESS, Mary, and I ought to have expected some such answer. But a handkerchief I am determined to have, and it shall be the very handsomest I can find."
"And the DEAREST? Well, you will have a very lady-like wardrobe with one pocket-handkerchief in it! I wonder you do not purchase a single shoe."
"Because I have TWO feet," replied Julia with spirit, though she laughed good-naturedly—"but here is the clerk, and he must not hear our quarrels. Have the goodness, sir, to show me the handsomest pocket-handkerchief in your shop."
I was drawn from beneath the pile and laid before the bright black eyes of Julia, with an air of solemn dignity, by the young dealer in finery.