Page:Letter to Young Girls (Ruskin).djvu/5



I promised an answer to the following pretty little initial-signed petition; and will try to answer fully, though I must go over ground crossed often enough before. But it is often well to repeat things in other times and words:—

"16th March, 1876.

"Sir, — Being very much interested in the St. George's Society, we venture to write and ask you if you will be so kind as to send us the rules, as, even if we could not join it, we should so like to try and keep them. We hope you will excuse our troubling you, but we do not know how else to obtain the rules.

"We remain, yours truly."

My dear children, the rules of St. George's Company are none other than those which, at your baptism, your godfathers and godmothers promised to see that you should obey—namely, the rules of conduct given to all His disciples by Christ, so far as, according to your ages, you can understand or practise them. But the Christian religion being now mostly obsolete, (and worse, falsely professed) throughout Europe, your godfathers, and godmothers, too probably, had no very clear notion of the Devil or his works, when