Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/39

Rh stead, and have enabled her to set a perpetual good example to her subjects of the blessedness of obedience to the injunction, "owe no man anything." It must not be forgotten, too, that she was not, throughout her girlhood, without an object lesson in the disagreeable consequences of extravagance. Her father had died in debt, and unless his creditors differed from the race of creditors in general, they did not fail during the seventeen years which elapsed between the Duke's death and his daughter's accession to remind his widow of the fact. One of the first acts of the young Queen on ascending the throne was to pay her father's debts, contracted before she was born.

The scrupulousness with regard to money which was enjoined on her as a child has been one of the Queen's many claims to the loyalty of her people. Miss Martineau, in her "Thirty Years' Peace" (written about 1845), speaking of this aspect of Her Majesty's education and character, has said, "Such things are no trifles. The energy and conscientiousness brought out by such training are blessings to a whole people; and a multitude of her more elderly subjects, to this day, feel a sort of delighted surprise as every year goes by without any irritation on any hand about regal extravagancewithout any whispered stories of loans to the Sovereignwithout any mournful tales of ruined tradesmen and exasperated creditors."

A trifling circumstance may here be mentioned illustrative of the Queen's economy in personal expenditure. A Paris dressmaker, of world-wide fame, recently (1893) brought an action against a rival who was trading under the same name. In the course of evidence given at the trial the celebrated modiste stated that he had made dresses for every Royal lady in Europe except Her Majesty the Queen of England. Indeed, every one who has seen the Queen, either in