Note 45 — Chapter II
Reading edition
There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by self-respecting persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew tobacco, and especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to perform the duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear in the street skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly soiling them. Not that all these things are not practised by persons justly regarded as gentlemen and ladies; but the same individuals would be, and feel themselves to be, much more emphatically gentlemen and ladies, if they abstained from them.