Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/208

 25, 1860.] were in a spacious house, surrounded by a broad sunny garden: green-houses extended on the one hand and a paddock on the other. Across the road—a pretty winding road, checkered with hedgerow timber—spread a noble park; and outside the park was a gravelly, hillocky, thymy, furze-sprinkled common, where you might smell the sea-air when the wind was east. What were all these charms to the poor girls? Unhappily, there was nothing that they liked; so they did nothing but sit still and sew. All the week days of the year they sat in the same places, doing fancy work, when their plain work was done. The fires were hot; the table was rich; they came down to a late breakfast, and went up to bed after an early supper. If a neighbour came to call, they were rather disconcerted; for they felt uncomfortable at going on with their work, and yet could not prevail on themselves to put it down. They were driven to church on Sundays; and, of course, they caught cold there nearly every week. The most pitiable thing was their tone of mind, when it could be more or less ascertained. Its stupid exclusiveness, mixed with an ignorant shyness, was really like something new under the sun: but I suppose one may meet with it in some convents where the nuns are kept idle. “We never go out.” “We don’t like walking.” “We don’t know what is in the garden.” “We never look into the green-house.” “We know nothing about politics.” “Papa reads the newspaper, but we never look at it.” “We are not fond of books,” and so on. Even about fancy work there was no getting on, so evident was their belief that nobody had patterns so good as theirs, and that nobody could work their patterns but themselves. Enough of them! for what could their lives be? They would certainly never marry. They were too far gone to change their habits. I doubt not they were carried to the churchyard, one after another, after a short and miserable life of disobedience to all the laws of health of body and mind.

In short and sharp contrast to this miserable group, let me disclose a much larger and happier one. No matter that it is on the other side of the Atlantic. It may be all the more instructive for that.

Some of my readers may remember hearing, above twenty years ago, of Angelina and Sarah Grimke, young Quaker ladies of South Carolina, and sisters of the learned Professor Grimké. The family were opulent; but the young sisters, troubled in conscience about slavery, freed their negroes and sacrificed at once their fortune and their native State; for they could not live in South Carolina without having or hiring slaves. They went northwards; and Angelina, after a time, married the well-known abolitionist, Theodore Weld. They have, for many years, dispensed an education of a very high quality indeed, to a long succession of girls; and, as it is a work of love, they go on with ever-growing skill and ease. Last summer a visitor spent a day in that country household, and what he saw was singularly impressive to him.

We hear much of the beauty of young American girls, and it is very true; but the beauty is sadly short-lived, because it is not based on physical vigour. It is otherwise with the full-grown young women in the Welds’ house, where the girls beg to stay as long as can possibly be allowed. As the ordinary mode of dress is neither healthy nor convenient, the girls wear a model dress, which is said to be graceful, and agreeable in colour, as well as commendable in other respects. It is made of a grey fabric, of the alpaca kind, trimmed with a suitable shade of red. It is a good deal like the Bloomer dress, with some improvements. When the guest saw the singular prevalence of ruddy health in the household, he was not surprised to find that the gardening was done mainly by the pupils. The ease and animation of the conversation struck him next, the topics being very solid and the spirit serious.

In the afternoon an excursion on the river was proposed. The girls were the rowers. They got out and prepared the boat, and pulled good strokes with ungloved hands. They managed the expedition as well as any boatmen could have done. While resting in a pretty spot, under the shade of the wooded bank, music was asked for. The girls sang glees and duets very charmingly,—with real excellence, the guest declares, both as to quality of voice and style. Now, this is like what many English parents want to see;—a country life at school, where the health may be established without the sacrifice of intellectual cultivation during the period of intellectual activity and tenacity.

If English parents wish this enough to demand it, they will obtain it. There is no natural reason why girls should not be trained to that robust womanhood which manifests itself by fitness for all occasions. In our age and country marriage is uncertain in the middle classes, and becoming rather less than more frequent. Every girl should be rendered “equal to either fortune” by the completeness of the development of her faculties. The world abounds in occupations and interests for all; and if we see a young woman declining in health and energy, and growing fretful or morose, or loquacious and trifling in her father’s house, we may be sure that her parents have not duly provided for her health of body and mind. If she is yet recoverable, it will be by some stroke of what the world calls misfortune, by which her own capacities will be proved to herself, and she will find, perhaps in the middle term of life, what it is to live.

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had many controversies in the kitchen, some of which were not argued with much coolness on either side, particularly those in which the comparative merits of the armies and navies of the two nations were concerned. Nations are apt to forget their reverses; but the French totally ignore the history of all campaigns in which they have had the worst of it, and their history, as written by themselves, progresses by stepping from one success to the next. When it is brought home to them that, since Fontenoy, they have never gained a great victory, or had