The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: opinion may bear any weight, is that the Dorsetshire ladies are
equal in beauty, and may be superior in reputation. In a word,
their reputation seems here to be better kept, guarded by better
conduct, and managed with more prudence; and yet the Dorsetshire
ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about
streets, or hide themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the
whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of
behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I
nowhere see better in all my observation through the whole isle of
Britain. In this little interval also I visited some of the
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