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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Yes," he said with the most unruffled composure, "I have submitted." His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable, that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a dream, "What does it mean?"
I was too much in the habit of looking for defects in what I heard and read; defects in style; errors in thought; mistakes in reasoning; faults in arrangement; and improprieties in manner and spirit. Considering that I was to a great extent self-taught, that much that I learned I learned after I had become almost a man, this perhaps was natural; but it was a disadvantage.
Whenever this last idea struck her, it excited, in the most edifying manner, her indignation against coquetry in general, and against her ladyship's in particular: she became wonderfully clear-sighted to all the improprieties of her ladyship's conduct.
She had not been "proper" to begin with at least, they said so; and as time went on she took no pains to be more "proper" than she was at first. Her improprieties, so far as I could ever learn, arose from nothing more heinous than her possession of an intelligence more powerful and a courage more daring than that to which any of her neighbours could lay claim.
This also reminds me of your conduct in the saloon yesterday; and as I wish to prevent the repetition of such improprieties, I shall take this opportunity of informing you, once for all, that if you do not in future conduct yourself with more discretion, I must apply to the Maitre d'Hotel. Now, sir, what do you want?"
Here, however, as elsewhere, his famous wit is like a bully-fencer, not ashamed to lay traps for its exhibition, transparently petulant for the train between certain ordinary words and the powder-magazine of the improprieties to be fired. Contrast the wit of Congreve with Moliere's.
To the intense horror of Eularia, a silver laugh of unmistakable amusement greeted this holy relic. "Beatrice! hast thou no reverence?" "Not for angels' feathers," answered Beatrice, still laughing. "Well, I did think you had more sense!" "I can assure thee, thou wilt shock Father Bruno if thou allowest thyself to commit such improprieties." "I shall shock him, then. How excessively absurd!"
It was accompanying a poor, faded-looking woman, who was singing in a peculiar hoarse voice, with a slight attempt at action, and a feeble sort of skip at the end of each stanza. I did not understand what she was singing, but I soon withdrew, because the songs sung at such times are said to be nearly always bristling with improprieties.
I told her that I well knew that to meet the public taste it was necessary to interlard fiction with risqué things in order to make it sell, but that it was my earnest hope she would in future resist this temptation. She only said that if she introduced improprieties into her book in order to make money, in her opinion she deserved to be whipped in the public streets.
Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registered, that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe.
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