that biscuits at lunch were not offered to them, or other such material and vulgar slights which they usually dwell upon as unendurable? If they have heart enough to love, and brains enough to teach and guide, their pupils, and sufficient independence of character not to let themselves be trampled upon, overworked, or snubbed, of what would they have to complain? Let them raise the tone of their position, and they will get all the respect they need and have a right to. I know Frenchwomen who are grandmothers, who still love and admire the feeble and disabled governesses of their girlhood who have helped to train their children and their grandchildren. But in France the superior woman, who might have made an excellent governness, is apt to enter one of the teaching orders, where, instead of doing the good she was intended to do singly, she helps in the crowd to work evil.
The home education of girls will be referred to in another chapter; here I wish to treat of the other kind,—the conventual training. Speaking from extensive knowledge of it, and of wide personal experience, I do not hesitate to qualify it as the very worst possible. It is bad everywhere, but nowhere is it so bad as in France. Its essential object is the destruction of independence and candour. I do not say that a frank girl will never be met with in a convent, but you will never find her among the privileged ones; she
