On mentioning the difficulty, this excellent person assumed the office of preparing his female friends to overlook the slight innovation of my still wearing the nightcap and slippers.
"The ladies would think nothing of it," the philosopher good-humoredly remarked, by way of lessening my regrets at having wounded their sensibilities, "were you even to appear in a military cloak and Hessian boots, provided it was not thought that you were of their acquaintance and in their immediate society.

I think you must have often remarked among the sex of your own species, who are frequently quite indifferent to nudities (their prejudices running counter to ours) that appear in the streets, but which would cause them instantly to run out of the room when exhibited in the person of an acquaintance; these conventional asides being tolerated everywhere by a judicious concession of punctilios that might otherwise become insupportable." "The distinction is too reasonable to require another word of explanation, dear sir.

Now let us rejoin the ladies, since I am at length in some degree fit to be seen." I was rewarded for this bit of delicate attention by an approving smile from the lovely Chatterissa, and good Mistress Lynx no longer kept her eyes riveted on the floor, but bent them on me with looks of admiration and gratitude.
"Now that this little contre-temps is no longer an obstacle," I resumed, "permit me to continue those inquiries which you have hitherto answered with so much amenity and so satisfactorily.

As you have no clothes, in what manner is the parallel between your usage and that of the new London police practically completed ?" "Although we have no clothes, nature, whose laws are never violated with impunity, but who is as beneficent as she is absolute, has furnished us with a downy covering to supply their places wherever clothes are needed for comfort.

We have coats that defy fashions, require no tailors, and never lose their naps.