I should not have said so much on this mischief, continued Mr. Worthy, from which I dare say, great folks fancy people in our station are safe enough, if I did not know and lament that this corrupt reading is now got down even among some of the lowest class. And it is an evil which is spreading every day. Poor industrious girls, who get their bread by the needle or the loom, spend half the night in listening to these books. Thus the labor of one girl is lost, and the minds of the rest are corrupted; for though their hands are employed in honest industry, which might help to preserve them from a life of sin, yet their hearts are at the very time polluted by scenes and descriptions which are too likely to plunge them into it; and when their vain weak heads compare the soft and delicious lives of the heroines in the book, with their own mean garb and hard labor, the effect is obvious; and I think I do not go too far when I say, that the vain and showy manner in which young women, who have to work for their bread, have taken to dress themselves, added to the poison they draw from these books, contribute together to bring them to destruction, more than almost any other cause. Now tell me, do not you think these wild books will hurt your daughters? _Bragwell._ Why I do think they are grown full of schemes, and contrivances and whispers, that's the truth on't. Every think is a secret. They always seem to be on the look-out for something, and when nothing comes on't, then they are sulky and disappointed. They will keep company with their equals; they despise trade and farming; and I own _I'm for the stuff_. I should not like them to marry any but a man of substance, if he was ever so smart. Now they will hardly sit down with a substantial country dealer. But if they hear of a recruiting party in our market-town, on goes the finery--off they are. Some flimsy excuse is patched up. They want something at the book-shop or the milliner's; because, I suppose, there is a chance that some Jack-a-napes of an ensign may be there buying sticking plaster. In short, I do grow a little uneasy; for I should not like to see all I have saved thrown away on a knapsack.