elegancies

Real, long-standing regard brought the Westons and Mr. Knightley; and by Mr. Elton, a young man living alone without liking it, the privilege of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the elegancies and society of Mr. Woodhouse’s drawing-room, and the smiles of his lovely daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away.

“Aye, that may suit your humble ideas of yourself;—I know what a modest creature you are; but it will not satisfy your friends to have you taking up with any thing that may offer, any inferior, commonplace situation, in a family not moving in a certain circle, or able to command the elegancies of life.”

Here Liszt had taken up his abode, renting two bare white-walled rooms for the summer, where he looked far more at home than among the splendours of the prelate's reception room or the feminine elegancies of the princess' boudoir.

Little could he tell, born as he had been to affluence, the anguish which would at times wring his spirit; his resources drained, his home destroyed, the little comforts to which his family had been accustomed, the gratification of their finer tastes, the elegancies of life—all cut off; it was well for him that he could not know at once the full extent of that change which had passed upon his fortunes.

However, we are apt to forget the elegancies and excellencies of the courtly man whose life was dedicated to useful service in a note that is struck by the home in which he lived.