"You won't allow us to be either pretty or well-dressed?" said
Mr. Stryker.
"Oh, everybody knows that Mr. Stryker's coat and bow are both unexceptionable."
"Why don't you go to work, good people, and improve the world, instead of finding fault with it?" said Mr. Wyllys, who was preparing for another game of chess with Mrs. Robert Hazlehurst.
"A labour of Hercules, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Stryker, shrugging his shoulders. "The position of a reformer is not sufficiently graceful to suit my fancy."
"It is fatiguing, too; it is much easier to sit still and find fault, sir," observed Robert Hazlehurst, smiling.
"Sauve qui peut, is my motto," continued Mr. Stryker. "I shall take care of myself; though I have no objection that the rest of the world should profit by my excellent example; they may improve on my model, if they please."
{"sauve qui peut" = everyone for himself (French)}
"The fact is, that manners, and all other matters of taste, ought to come by instinct," said Mrs. Robert Hazlehurst; "one soon becomes tired of beings regularly tutored on such points."
"No doubt of that," replied Harry; "but unfortunately, though reading and writing come by nature, as Dogberry says, in this country, yet it is by no means so clear that good taste follows as a consequence."
{"Dogberry" = a constable in Shakespeare's comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing": "To be a well-favor'd man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature." III.iii.14-16}