£ s. d.
March 16. Balance 1471 8 11
21. Miss O. Hill, 1½ year’s rent on
Marylebone Freehold 90 5 0
28. R. Forsyth (tea-shop) 54 0 0
April 7. Dividend on £7000 Bank Stock 315 0 0
8. Petty cash (Dividends on small shares in
Building Societies and the like) 25 3 3
----------
1956 6 4
March 21. Jackson £50 0 0
22. Self [42] 100 0 0
23. Warren and Jones 56 16 3
25, and April 7. Crawley 40 0 0
April 1. Secretary 25 0 0
1. Downs 25 0 0
2. Kate, (and 11th April) 45 0 0
6. Burgess 50 0 0
6. David 53 0 0
--------- 444 16 3
-----------
Balance, April 16. £1511 10 1
III. I have promised an answer this month to the following pretty
little letter; and will try to answer fully, though I must go over
ground crossed often enough before. But it is often well to repeat
things in other times and words:—
“16th March, 1876.
“Sir,—Being very much interested in the St. George’s Society, we
venture to write and ask you if you will be so kind as to send us the
rules, as, even if we could not join it, we should so like to try and
keep them. We hope you will excuse our troubling you, but we do not
know how else to obtain the rules.
We remain, yours truly.”
My dear children, the rules of St. George’s Company are none other than
those which at your baptism your godfather and godmother promised to
see that you should obey—namely, the rules of conduct given to all His
disciples by Christ, so far as, according to your ages, you can
understand or practise them. But the Christian religion being now
mostly obsolete, (and worse, falsely professed) throughout Europe, your
godfather, and godmother, too probably, had no very clear notion of the
Devil or his works, when they promised you should renounce them; and
St. George hereby sends you a splinter of his lance, in token that you
will find extreme difficulty in putting any of Christ’s wishes into
practice, under the present basilisk power of society.
Nevertheless, St. George’s first order to you, supposing you were put
under his charge, would be that you should always, in whatever you do,
endeavour to please Christ; (and He is quite easily pleased if you
try;) but in attempting this, you will instantly find yourself likely
to displease many of your friends or relations; and St. George’s second
order to you is that in whatever you do, you consider what is kind and
dutiful to them also, and that you hold it for a sure rule that no
manner of disobedience to your parents, or of disrespect and
presumption towards your friends, can be pleasing to God. You must
therefore be doubly submissive; first in your own will and purpose to
the law of Christ; then in the carrying out of your purpose, to the
pleasure and orders of the persons whom He has given you for superiors.
And you are not to submit to them sullenly, but joyfully and heartily,
keeping nevertheless your own purpose clear, so soon as it becomes
proper for you to carry it out.
Under these conditions, here are a few of St. George’s orders for you
to begin with:—
1st. Keep absolute calm of temper, under all chances; receiving
everything that is provoking and disagreeable to you as coming directly
from Christ’s hand: and the more it is like to provoke you, thank Him
for it the more; as a young soldier would his general for trusting him
with a hard place to hold on the rampart. And remember, it does not in
the least matter what happens to you,—whether a clumsy schoolfellow
tears your dress, or a shrewd one laughs at you, or the governess
doesn’t understand you. The one thing needful is that none of these
things should vex you. For your mind is at this time of your youth
crystallizing like sugar-candy; and the least jar to it flaws the
crystal, and that permanently.
2nd. Say to yourselves every morning, just after your prayers: “Whoso
forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.” That is exactly
and completely true: meaning that you are to give all you have to
Christ to take care of for you. Then if He doesn’t take care of it, of
course you know it wasn’t worth anything. And if He takes anything from
you, you know you are better without it. You will not indeed, at your
age, have to give up houses, or lands, or boats, or nets; but you may
perhaps break your favourite teacup, or lose your favourite thimble,
and might be vexed about it, but for this second St. George’s precept.
3rd. What, after this surrender, you find entrusted to you, take
extreme care of, and make as useful as possible. The greater part of
all they have is usually given to grown-up people by Christ, merely
that they may give it away again: but schoolgirls, for the most part,
are likely to have little more than what is needed for themselves: of
which, whether books, dresses, or pretty room furniture, you are to
take extreme care, looking on yourself, indeed, practically, as a
little housemaid set to keep Christ’s books and room in order, and not
as yourself the mistress of anything.
4th. Dress as plainly as your parents will allow you: but in bright
colours, (if they become you,) and in the best materials,—that is to
say, in those which will wear longest. When you are really in want of a
new dress, buy it, (or make it) in the fashion: but never quit an old
one merely because it has become unfashionable. And if the fashion be
costly, you must not follow it. You may wear broad stripes or narrow,
bright colours or dark, short petticoats or long, (in moderation,) as
the public wish you; but you must not buy yards of useless stuff to
make a knot or a flounce of, nor drag them behind you over the ground.
And your walking dress must never touch the ground at all. I have lost
much of the faith I once had in the common sense and even in the
personal delicacy of the present race of average English women, by
seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the streets, if it is
the fashion to be scavengers.
5th. If you can afford it, get your dresses made by a good dressmaker,
with utmost attainable precision and perfection: but let this good
dressmaker be a poor person, living in the country; not a rich person
living in a large house in London. ‘There are no good dressmakers in
the country.’ No: but there soon will be if you obey St. George’s
orders, which are very strict indeed, about never buying dresses in
London. ‘You bought one there, the other day, for your own pet!’ Yes;
but that was because she was a wild Amorite, who had wild Amorites to
please; not a Companion of St. George.
6th. Learn dressmaking yourself, with pains and time; and use a part of
every day in needlework, making as pretty dresses as you can for poor
people who have not time nor taste to make them nicely for themselves.
You are to show them in your own wearing what is most right, and
graceful; and to help them to choose what will be prettiest and most
becoming in their own station. If they see that you never try to dress
above your’s, they will not try to dress above their’s. Read the little
scene between Miss Somers and Simple Susan, in the draper’s shop, in
Miss Edgeworth’s Parent’s Assistant; and by the way, if you have not
that book, let it be the next birthday present you ask papa or uncle
for.
7th. Never seek for amusement, but be always ready to be amused. The
least thing has play in it—the slightest word, wit, when your hands are
busy and your heart is free. But if you make the aim of your life
amusement, the day will come when all the agonies of a pantomime will
not bring you an honest laugh. Play actively and gaily; and cherish,
without straining, the natural powers of jest in others and
yourselves;—remembering all the while that your hand is every instant
on the helm of the ship of your life, and that the Master, on the far
shore of Araby the blest, looks for its sail on the horizon,—to its
hour.