It gives me the most sincere pleasure to see your letters to my father
written just as if you were talking to a favourite friend of your own
age, and with that manly simplicity characteristic of your mind and
manner from the time you were able to speak. There is something in this
perfect openness and in the courage of daring to be always yourself,
which attaches more than I can express, more than all the
Chesterfieldian arts and graces that ever were practised.
The worked sleeves are for Mrs. Stewart, and you are to offer them to
her,--nobody can say I do not know how to choose my ambassadors well! If
Mrs. Stewart should begin to say, "O! it is a pity Miss Edgeworth should
spend her time at such work!" please to interrupt her speech, though
that is very rude, and tell her that I like work very much, and that I
have only done this at odd times, after breakfast you know, when my
father reads out Pope's _Homer_, or when there are long sittings, when
it is much more agreeable to move one's fingers than to have to sit with
hands crossed or clasped immovably. I by no means accede to the doctrine
that ladies cannot attend to anything else when they are working:
besides, it is contrary, is not it, to all the theories of _Zoonomia_?
Does not Dr. Darwin show that certain habitual motions go on without
interrupting trains of thought? And do not common sense and experience,
whom I respect even above Dr. Darwin, show the same thing?
_To_ MISS SOPHY RUXTON.