Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.308. Various
has a private audience of the superior, in order that, her mental standing having been duly ascertained, she may be drafted into class second or third, as the case may be. After rendering a true and particular account of her acquirements in reading, writing, needlework, &c. &c. and admitted her total ignorance of French, music, and dancing, the order is given for her admission into the third class, and beginning French forthwith. Dancing and music are held out as stimulants to quicken her diligence in making herself 'generally useful,' in consideration of having been received into the establishment at one-half the usual charge. Her duties cannot very clearly be defined, but she will soon comprehend them. Soon, indeed, poor girl! they being, in fact, to do all that is neglected to be performed by the other members of the household – to stand in the alternate relations of nursemaid and instructress of the younger children, and of butt and fag to the elder ones. She must be prepared to consider herself the link between the lower teacher and the upper servant, willing to lend her aid to each, and to bear the blame due to either; to labour with untiring diligence to improve her mind and increase her accomplishments, and thus eventually supersede the necessity for an under teacher at all.
These are multifarious duties, it must be admitted; but, as Dr Johnson says, 'few things are impossible to ingenuity and perseverance.' She has not been brought up in the lap of refinement, and therefore misses not its comforts: she is blessed with a strong constitution and a willing mind, loves learning for its own sake, and never forgets that every member of her own family may be ultimately benefited through her means.
It is true that at first it is painful to stand up with the little class – herself a giant among pigmies; to be conscious of a sneering smile on the part of the teacher as she draws a parallel between her bodily height and her dwarfish information. It is mortifying to know that her dresses have been discovered, by their misfit, to have belonged to other parties – that the discrepancies between her own initials and those on her linen have not been overlooked – and to feel that the absence of a weekly allowance, and regular home correspondence, are never-failing sources of unsympathising wonder.
All this is mortifying enough, but it is not all she has to undergo. After rising early, and lying down late, and eating the bread of carefulness, she finds that even the rigid performance of her own duties, and the neglected work of half-a-dozen people besides, meets at first with but little encouragement from the mistress of the house, who receives it purely as a matter of course, while it does not fail to awaken the distrust and jealousy of her subordinates. The cook remembers her refusal to connive at the abstraction of 'a dust of tea,' even when the key of the storeroom was actually in her hand; and the housemaid bears in mind that Miss Johnson would have bestowed upon her her last year's cloak on the arrival of her new visite, had not the half-boarder suggested the necessity for asking leave. The French teacher does not forget that, on the only occasion in which she indulged in a little harmless flirtation with a whiskered cousin of her own, the half-boarder looked reproof; the English teacher remembers her refusal furtively to procure sundry little delicacies not included in the daily bill of fare; while her assistant notes her strenuous efforts to qualify herself to supersede her in her own department.
All these offences are registered and retaliated. The cook, when reproved for any omission, stoutly declares that orders transmitted through Miss Armstrong never reach her; the housemaid, in waiting at table, contrives that the least savoury plat shall fall to her lot; the Parisienne shrugs her shoulders as she comments on her air bourgeois; the English teacher frankly declares she never could like her; whilst her subordinate sister 'hopes' that Miss Armstrong may prove as simple as she appears.
But a Sacred Authority has assured us that though sorrow may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning; and the experience even of a half-boarder demonstrates that a patient continuance in welldoing is not without its reward. By degrees the lot of our heroine is considerably ameliorated: the prejudice against her begins to wear away; and even the English teacher, who has held out the longest, having a character for consistency to maintain, is constrained to admit that Miss Armstrong is an estimable and well-conducted young person. Her desire to please is at length appreciated, and her poverty is even admitted to be rather her misfortune than her fault. The great girls cease to despise her – the little girls learn to love her. The higher powers readily second the exertions for self-improvement which promise to relieve them from the drudgery of initiatory instruction; and the prize held out for the successful fulfilment of her humbler duties is in process of time secured. Instruction in dancing and music commences with the second half year, and glimmerings of still greater glories are pointed out in the distance.
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