anything, by writing to you at this time to fix her excellent image in your blind.
As you grow older and become acquainted with more of my friends, you will hear from every mouth the most exalted character of your incomparable mother. You will be convinced, by your own reflections upon her conduct, that she fulfilled the part of a mother towards you and towards your sisters, without partiality for her own or servile indulgence towards mine. Her heart, conscious of rectitude, was above the fear of raising suspicions to her disadvantage in the mind of your father or in the minds of your other relatives. And though her timely restraint of you, and that steadiness of behaviour, yielding fondness towards you only by the exact measure of your conduct, at first alarmed those who did not know her, yet now, my dearest daughter, every person who has the least connection with my family is anxious to give sincere testimony to their admiration of those very circumstances which they had too hastily, and from a common and well-grounded opinion, associated with the idea of a second wife.
Continue, my dear daughter, the desire which you feel of becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character with such an understanding as yours necessarily ensue: but true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your behaviour, can be had only from reflection and from being thoroughly convinced of what experience teaches, in general too late, that to be happy we must be good.
God bless you and make you ambitious of that valuable praise which the amiable character of your dear mother forces from the virtuous and the wise. My writing to you in my present situation will, my dearest daughter, be remembered by you as the strongest proof of the love of
This letter, written at such a time, conveyed the impression intended, and thenceforward, even more than previously, the will to act up to the high opinion her father had formed of her character constituted the key-note of Maria Edgeworth's life, the exciting and controlling power.
At school as well as at home, Maria distinguished herself as an entertaining story-teller. She soon learnt, with all the tact of an improvisatrice, to know
