The prude has a wonderful esteem for the chain-laugh or dimple; she looks upon all other kinds of laughter as excessives of levity, and is never seen upon the most extravagant jests, to disorder her features with a smile; her lips are composed with a primness peculiar to her character; all her modesty seems collected into her face, and but very rarely takes the freedom to sink her cheek into a dimple. The effeminate fop, by the long exercise of his countenance at the glass, is in the same situation, and you may generally see him admire his own eloquence by a dimple.
The young widow is only a chain for a time; her smiles are confined by decorum, and she is obliged to make her face sympathise with her habit; she looks demure by art, and by the strictest rule of decency is never allowed to smile, till the first offer or advance to her is over.
The wag generally calls in the horse-laugh to his assistance.
There are another kind of grinners, which some people term sneerers. They always indulge their mirth at the expence of their friends, and all their ridicule consists in unseasonable ill-nature; but they should consider, that let them do what they will, they never can laugh away their own folly by sneering at other people’s.
The coquette has a great deal of the sneerer in her composition; but she must be allowed to be a proficient in laughter, and one who can run through all the exercise of the features: she subdues the formal lover with the dimple---accosts the fop with a smile—joins with the wit in a downright laugh:---to vary the air of her countenance, she frequently rallies with a grin---and when she hath ridiculed her lover quite out of his understanding, she, to complete his misfortunes, strikes him dumb with the horse-laugh.
At present the most fashionable is a mixture of the horse-laugh and the grin, so happily blended together, that the teeth are shown without the face being distorted.
EXTRAVAGANCE AND AVARICE.
Some rich men starve to-day for fear of starving to-morrow, (as a man leaps into the sea to avoid being drowned) and the indigent often consume in an hour what they may feel the want of a year: as if old people hoarded money because they cannot want it, and young men throw it away because it is necessary to their subsistence.
He is rich enough that needs neither flatter nor borrow, and truly rich that is satisfied: want lies in desire.