that it is my duty, and that I may be satisfied. Satisfied, when I
see children cramped in soul, destroyed in body, that fine ladies may
wear lace trimmings! Satisfied with the blight of the most promising
buds! Satisfied, when I know that every alley and lane of town or
country reeks with vice and corruption, and that there is one cry for
workers with brains and with purses! And here am I, able and
willing, only longing to task myself to the uttermost, yet tethered
down to the merest mockery of usefulness by conventionalities. I am
a young lady forsooth!--I must not be out late, I must not put forth
my views; I must not choose my acquaintance, I must be a mere
helpless, useless being, growing old in a ridiculous fiction of
prolonged childhood, affecting those graces of so-called sweet
seventeen that I never had--because, because why? Is it for any
better reason than because no mother can bear to believe her daughter
no longer on the lists for matrimony? Our dear mother does not tell
herself that this is the reason, but she is unconsciously actuated by
it. And I have hitherto given way to her wish. I mean to give way
still in a measure; but I am five and twenty, and I will no longer be
withheld from some path of usefulness! I will judge for myself, and
when my mission has declared itself, I will not be withheld from it
by any scruple that does not approve itself to my reason and
conscience. If it be only a domestic mission--say the care of Fanny,
poor dear helpless Fanny, I would that I knew she was safe,--I would
not despise it, I would throw myself into it, and regard the training
her and forming her boys as a most sacred office. It would not be
too homely for me. But I had far rather become the founder of some
establishment that might relieve women from the oppressive task-work
thrown on them in all their branches of labour. Oh, what a worthy
ambition!"