Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/34

 be equally serviceable with—I had almost said—an indifferent private one.

"My next reason is, that I am not at all qualified for the task. I have seen a good deal of the manner of educating boys, and know pretty well what is expected in the care of them; but in a girls' boarding-school I should be quite a novice: I never was at one myself, have not even the advantage of younger sisters, which might have given me some notion of the management of girls; indeed, for the early part of my life I conversed little with my own sex. In the village where I was, there were none to converse with; and this, I am very sensible, has given me an awkwardness in many common things, which would make me most peculiarly unfit for the education of my own sex. But suppose I were tolerably qualified to instruct those of my own rank;—consider, that these must be of a class far