Forgetful of the imprudence I was going to commit--I told Miss _Ton_ her prayers had proved ineffectual--her largest feather was snapped in two. Is it possible! exclaimed she, and reddened prodigiously.--Shocked at the blunder I had made, and pitying her weakness, I gave her my bottle of Eau de Luce; and not caring to hazard any further on so interesting a subject, lest it should hurt her nerves, I turned the conversation to what was more indifferent--a sister of her's, who _had died in child-bed a fortnight before_. (This, my dear friend--to philosophise--no abstract evil exists; for whatever calamities human life is subject to, their evil depends merely on our own sensibility.) Sir Timothy Clinquant rejoined us. He is handsome, has a good opinion of himself, and is no stranger to the art of flattery. She lamented to him the accident of her feather. From a knowledge of human nature, that nothing pleases so much as to have a defect of any kind turned into a beauty--he assured her the feather being broke gave it an air of negligence so perfectly adapted to the _contour_ of her fine face, that he could not be convinced, but that she _accidentally_ on _purpose_ afforded it _that grace_. Thus was she restored to good-humour.--I can tell you little of what I saw; Miss Ton's head intercepted my view of the stage: _her rage_ of going late having prevented our getting any other but end seats, and she sat before me. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth there was a law made to restrict the growth of ruffs: I wish our legislators,[36] who, in this accommodating age, do sometimes condescend to bestow their attention on trifles, would take the size of heads into their consideration. Mr Walpole observes, in his anecdotes of painting in England, that in the reign of the two first Edwards, the ladies erected such pyramids on their heads that the face became the center of the body. An eminent physician has declared, that more deformed children have been brought into the world this last year than for twenty years before, on account of the ladies stooping in their carriages--One thing I am certain of--it makes them contract a habit of frowning, that furrows their foreheads. A fine lady is the least part of herself, and is every morning put together like some instrument. Dress is the subject eternally discussed. Gulliver tells us, that the sages of Laputa, having substituted things in place of words, carried along with them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they intended to discourse on.--Were this the case, it would be a great relief; but alas! they do no more here than propose the subject. But to return to the opera--Miss _Ton_, in telling me who the people were, said they were _horrid creatures_, that is to say, censorious or _awkward_, because _not of her particular set_.