Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/41

Rh you will prepare yourself, while you can, for meeting even such a sad reverse of fortune. You have abilities of some kind, that may be so improved as to be to you a means of subsistence, should all external sources fail. Wisely improve them while you can. The very act of doing so will give you more real pleasure than you now suppose.”

This wise counsel was not lost. Both Jane and her sister Edith had the good sense to understand their father, and the decision to act fully up to the spirit of his advice. To one of them he recommended the thorough study of French, Spanish, and Italian, and to the other music; but the tastes of neither of them seemed to lie much in this way. Somewhat to the disappointment of their father, and the utter astonishment of their gay young friends, Jane commenced learning the millinery, and Edith the dress-making business; and they persevered steadily for a year in what they had undertaken, going four days in each week to the work-rooms of a fashionable milliner and dress-maker, and gaining a knowledge of the art and mystery they sought to acquire by actual labor with their hands.

Five years had not elapsed from this period, before, in one of the periodical commercial