The Fitz-Boodle Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray

Beyond sparring and cricket, I do not recollect I learned anything / useful at Slaughter-House School, where I was educated (according to an / old family tradition, which sends particular generations of gentlemen to / particular schools in the kingdom; and such is the force of habit, that / though I hate the place, I shall send my own son thither too, should / I marry any day). I say I learned little that was useful at Slaughter / House, and nothing that was ornamental. I would as soon have thought / of learning to dance as of learning to climb chimneys. Up to the age of / seventeen, as I have shown, I had a great contempt for the female race, / and when age brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was / I? -- I could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young bear / could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches carrying off / young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in waltzes, whispering / between their glossy curls in quadrilles, simpering with perfect / equanimity, and cutting pas in that abominable "cavalier seul," until my / soul grew sick with fury. In a word, I determined to learn to dance.

But such things are hard to be acquired late in life, when the bones and / the habits of a man are formed. Look at a man in a hunting-field who has / not been taught to ride as a boy. All the pluck and courage in the world / will not make the man of him that I am, or as any man who has had the / advantages of early education in the field.