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Yet with all his affectations and fatuities, Pliny compels respect, and even a measure of admiration, by the real goodness of his character. Where a good life is lived, it hardly becomes us to be too critical of motives and springs of action; and in Pliny's case the practice of domestic and civic virtue was accompanied by a considerable literary gift.

The handwriting of a lady or gentleman should not be commercial or scholastic, but firm and characteristic. All affectations in writing should be avoided, such as sloping one's hand to the left, the use of flourishes, undue size in the characters, or a diminutiveness of the same to try eyesight and patience. The signature should be simple and unostentatious.

After another silence a young fellow, in a shabby velvet coat, stood up. He was commonly known among his fellow potters as 'the hartist, because of his long hair, his little affectations of dress, and his æsthetic susceptibilities generally.

On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly beauty in her.

A few little pretences and affectations she might have, such as that of knowing a great deal about every subject under the sun of having read everything, and been everywhere, but her interest in other people was real. That was what made people like her.

It was better than Miss Casey's rendering, for it was without any professional frills and affectations; just the simple story told in the simplest way by one who felt to the fullest the beauty of the picture and the music of the poem.

Whereat Morsfield, certain that his parasitic thrasyleon apeing coxcomb would avoid extremities, mimicked him execrably. Now this was a second breach of the implied convention existing among the exquisitely fine-bred silken-slender on the summits of our mundane sphere, which demands of them all, that they respect one another's affectations.

On seeing the affectations of their too amiable hostess which were, indeed, affectations of soul and mind the friends glanced at each other, and put on a deeply serious expression to listen to Madame de la Baudraye, who made them a set speech of thanks for coming to cheer the monotony of her days.

Ward had gone across to greet the Bellamys; Harriet fixed her eyes with a sort of fascination upon the man to whom she presently saw him talking. Almost everyone else in the group was looking at him, too; Royal Blondin was used to it; one of his favourite affectations was an apparent unconsciousness of being observed.

"This is a spurious letter," she said, holding it up. "You would never write such an affair to a male friend. You betrayed a consciousness of my femininity in every line. You preached to me and warned me with the same penful of ink. You write as if you were a commonplace male cynic, and I a woman who was trying to unsex herself by a lot of ridiculous affectations.