Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/177

 Rh kindly affected to everything that breathes. … Perhaps the greatest pleasure I have ever received has arisen from the habitual exercise of charity in its various branches."

The stories with which this monitress illustrates her precepts are drawn from the edifying annals of the neighbourhood, which is rich in examples of vice and virtue. On the one hand we have the pious Mrs. Trueman, the curate's wife, who lives in a rose-covered cottage, furnished with books and musical instruments; and on the other, we have "the profligate Lord Sly," and Miss Jane Fretful, who begins by kicking the furniture when she is in a temper, and ends by alienating all her friends (including her doctor), and dying unloved and unlamented. How far her mother should be held responsible for this excess of peevishness, when she rashly married a gentleman named Fretful, is not made clear; but all the characters in the book live nobly, or ignobly, up to their patronymics. When Mary neglects to wash her face—apparently that was all she ever washed—or brush her teeth in the mornings, Mrs. Mason for some time only hints her