is but little that I can do for them; and that little I am apt to despise, in the vain desire to do more.”

“How more?”

“If I had them in a house by myself, to spend their whole time with me, so that I could educate, instead of merely teaching them. But here I am doing just what we were talking of just now,—laying out a pretty-looking field of duty, in which there would probably be as many thorns as in any other. Teaching has its pleasures,—its great occasional, and small daily pleasures, though they are not to be compared to the sublime delights of education.”

“You must have some of these sublime delights mixed in with the humbler. You are, in some degree, educating these children while teaching them.”

“Yes: but it is more a negative than a positive function, a very humble one. Governesses to children at home can do little more than stand between children and the faults of the people about them. I speak quite generally.”

“Is such an occupation one in which anybody can be happy?”

“Why not, as well as in making pins’ heads, or in nursing sick people, or in cutting square blocks out of a chalk pit for thirty years together, or in any other occupation which may be ordained to prove to us that happiness lies in the temper, and not in the object of a pursuit? Are there not free and happy pin-makers, and sick-nurses, and chalk-cutters?”

“Yes: but they know how much to expect. They have no idea of pin-making in itself being great happiness.”

“Just so. Well: let a governess learn what to expect; set her free from a hankering after happiness in her work, and you have a happy governess.”

“I thought such a thing was out of the order of nature.”

“Not quite. There have been such, though there are strong influences against it. The expectations of all parties are unreasonable; and those who are too humble, or too amiable, to be dissatisfied with others, are discontented with themselves, when the inevitable disappointment comes. There is a great deal said about the evils of the position of a governess—between the family and the servants—a great deal said that is very true, and always will be true, while governesses have proud hearts, like other people: but these are slight evils in comparison with the grand one of the common failure of the relation.—There! do you hear that bell?”

“What is it? The