departed friends or relatives. They carefully noted down all such messages in books carried for the purpose, they loaded their wallets with alms, and armed themselves with a sharp scythe, to clear the road of the many thorns and briars said to impede the paths to Paradise. Thus equipped, the poor creatures would embark on a deep lake in a small canoe; paddling out a short distance, they attached heavy weights to their bodies, and sprang into the water, whilst their admiring fraternity calmly regarded them as men much to be envied, and took care that the canoe should be burnt with fire, as a vessel too sacred to be ever defiled by being applied to less noble purposes.
JOLLY ANGLERS.
Four of us went out fishing,
Mary, Fairy, I, and the man:
No use in grumble or wishing,
People may catch who can.
Mary was lucky that morning,
Lucky almost, I think, as the man,
And she laughed with her saucy scorning
As the fishes they filled her can.
The man was lucky in hooking:
Off the perch with his trimmers ran,
And he caught us a dish worth cooking,
As your Maidenhead fisherman can.
I caught nothing worth keeping,
Things about the length of a span;
When a gentleman’s heart is leaping
He may strike a fish, if he can.
But Fairy, she made a capture,
On her darling own original plan,
And Fairy’s eyes looked rapture
As her great soft violets can.
With a single line she made it,
O, such a line you’d have liked to scan!
One line, and the lady laid it
Where loving young ladies can.
In a gentleman’s hand she placed it
Before our Maidenhead fishing began,
How his chances of fish were wasted,
Tell, lovers—who only can.
Over-night an enraptured dancer
Had handed a passionate note in a fan,
And the line was this gracious answer—
“You may love me—if you can.”
THE GOVERNESS.
HER HEALTH.
“The Governess! What sort of governess?” my readers may ask, in the first place.
Of four orders of female teachers, I do not propose to consider the case of those who have a home. Women who have a home usually have their health in their own hands; and all that I can say to such has been said already.
It may be considered that there are four orders of female teachers: schoolmistresses, private governesses, daily-governesses, and teachers of music, drawing, dancing, and other arts.
There is no apparent peculiarity in the condition of the schoolmistress which can have much bearing on her health. She has few or no special liabilities to ill-health; and, if she is properly qualified, she has the essential advantage of exemption from that dismal class of ailments, the maladies d’ennui. She has her trials, like everybody else. There is a suburb of London where the rules of the book-club contain, or did recently contain, a provision that no person engaged in education shall be admitted as a subscriber. There are still wives of merchants and manufacturers who, pondering the prospects of their daughters, say, “The truth is, no woman who has been engaged in education ever can obtain the position of one who has not.” There is still a reluctance in men to refer to the fact that their mothers or sisters have kept a school. Between this mode of feeling among grown people, and the awe and dread with which young people regard all educators, the schoolmistress may encounter some little difficulty in society, till she has won her own way, and made her own friends; but this is no hardship worth mentioning in connection with health. A woman whose nerves cannot stand the prejudices of the ignorant and vulgar is unfit to be a schoolmistress, and is not worth our consideration here.
The schoolmistress has the grand advantage of a line of duty accordant with her faculties. Women are made for domestic administration; and the little realm of a school is precisely the proper kingdom for an able woman who enjoys the exercise of her faculties. She may be an egotist, as anybody may; but her occupation affords no encouragement to that source of disease and misery. Naturally, she should be incessantly occupied, exercised, interested; so as to have her nerves in a good state. There are anxieties belonging to the function. The children are faulty, of course, more or less; and occasionally one is corrupt—a heavy anxiety, and grave embarrassment and grief. Parents are often unreasonable, ungrateful, or ill-mannered; but they can impose only occasional annoyance. In a general way the schoolmistress reigns supreme in her proper domain, seeing, on the whole, a happy progress made by her pupils in growth, and countenance, and in moral intelligence; and finding at last that she has been providing for her latter years a rich store of friends, and the means of independence when her working days ought to cease. It is true, we see women mismanage their health in that as in other positions. I have known a pair of them who set up a pony carriage, and spent the afternoons in country-drives, who declared that they “had not time” to wash below their shoulders. They had poor health; and this was the excuse for the afternoon absence; but they could not be induced to rise one quarter of an hour earlier, to relieve themselves of the obvious cause of their ailments. Under no circumstances would they have “had time” to do what they did not like. The same may be said of habits of late sitting-up, insufficient exercise, an unfavourable mode of dress, and other follies of the kind; but the vocation itself seems, by the number of aged schoolmistresses, to be, on the whole, favourable to longevity. Many of us may recall some cheerful specimen of the order; some gay old