No. 7. The 'World.'—Feb. 15, 1753.
'Whoever is a frequenter of public assemblies, or joins in a party of cards in private families, will give evidence to the truth of this complaint.
'How common is it with some people, at the conclusion of every unsuccessful hand of cards, to burst forth into sallies of fretful complaints of their own amazing ill-fortune and the constant and invariable success of their antagonists! They have such excellent memories as to be able to recount every game they have lost for six months successively, and yet are so extremely forgetful at the same time as not to recollect a single game they have won. Or if you put them in mind of any extraordinary success that you have been witness to, they acknowledge it with reluctance, and assure you, upon their honours, that in a whole twelvemonth's play they never rose winners but that once.
'But if these growlers (a name which I shall always call men of this class by) would only content themselves with giving repeated histories of their ill-fortunes, without making invidious remarks on the success of others, the evil would not be so great.
'Indeed, I am apt to impute it to their fears, that they stop short of the grossest affronts; for I have seen in their faces such rancour and inveteracy, that nothing but a lively apprehension of consequences could have restrained their tongues.
'Happy would it be for the ladies if they had the consequences to apprehend; for, I am sorry to say it, I have met with female, I will not say growlers, the word is too harsh for them; let me call them fretters, who with the prettiest faces and the liveliest wit imaginable, have condescended to be the jest and the disturbance of the whole company.'
No. 18. The 'World.'—May 3, 1753.
A worthy gentleman, who is suffering from the consequences of treating his wife and daughter to a visit to Paris, is describing, in a letter to Mr. FitzAdam, the follies into which the ladies of his party were betrayed 'in order to fit themselves out to appear, as the French say, honnêtement.'
'In about three days,' writes the victim of these vagaries of fashion, 'the several mechanics, who were charged with the care of disguising my wife and daughter, brought home their respective parts of the transformation. More than the whole morning was employed in this operation, for we did not sit down to dinner till near five o'clock. When my wife and daughter came at last into the eating-room, where I had waited for them at least two hours, I was so struck with their transformation that I could neither conceal nor express my astonishment. "Now, my dear," said my wife, "we can appear a little like Christians." "And strollers too," replied I; "for such have I seen at Southwark Fair. This cannot surely be serious!" "Very serious, depend upon it, my dear," said my wife; "and pray, by the way, what may there be ridiculous in it?"