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In spite of her notions of decency, she was glad of his intrusion, and, being in no condition to observe punctilios, slipped on a wrapper, opened the door, and, with a faltering voice, owned herself frightened almost to distraction.

I may have mistaken some of the punctilios of the arrangement, for my very soul was sick. My landlady was sister to the man who owned the drove; and from her I learned that he had, a few days previous, bought a negro-woman, who refused to go with him. A blow on the side of her head with the butt of his whip, soon brought her to the ground; he then tied her, and carried her off.

The sailing-master, who had spent the early years of his life as the commander of divers vessels employed in trading, was apt, like many men of his vocation and origin, to mistake the absence of refinement for the surest evidence of seamanship; and, consequently, he held the little courtesies and punctilios of a man-of-war in high disdain.

The dictates of my father were to MacVittie and MacFin the laws of the Medes and Persians, not to be altered, innovated, or even discussed; and the punctilios exacted by Owen in their business transactions, for he was a great lover of form, more especially when he could dictate it ex cathedra, seemed scarce less sanctimonious in their eyes.

It was only whispered, for something unutter- ably mournful no less than distressing in this spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios. "I am beyond myself about this, and am mad." he said. "I am no stoic at all to he supplicating here; but I do supplicate to you.

Parlor-men, dancing-masters, the graduates of the Albe Bellgarde, may shrug their laced shoulders at the boisterousness of Allen in England. True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers; for where modest gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair; as if my Lord Chesterfield should take off his hat, and smile, and bow, to a mad bull, in hopes of a reciprocation of politeness.

It has been well said that "attention to the punctilios of politeness is a proof at once of self-respect, and of respect for your friend." Though irksome at first, these trifles soon cease to be matters for memory, and become things of mere habit. To the thoroughly well-bred, they are a second nature.

He was alike remarkable for the politeness of his manners, and his agreeable address; for he had such a treacherous memory, though he had been frequently reminded of the propriety and indeed the necessity of observing those little punctilios of good behaviour, that he seldom remembered when any company entered the room in which he happened to be sitting, either to rise from his chair or take off his hat; and when he was told of it either by his parents or his master, he would bounce up, and snatch of his hat in such an awkward hurry, grinning and leering the whole time, that you would have thought he had just started from a dream; and even then he would generally forget to finish the rude ceremony by making one of his ducking bows.

Sometimes he kept it locked, but very often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to get him something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly because her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, she had examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman's handwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned the coat and the letter.

Lawrence's answer. The allusion of the Queen of Blondes had stung her in the unacknowledged regions where women discard themselves and are most sensitive. 'Decide on coming soon to Lady de Culme, said Mrs. Lawrence. 'Now that her arms are open to you, she would like to have you in them. She is old . You won't be rigorous? no standing on small punctilios?