future, and thus to create a kindly feeling between yourself and your employer, or to use the "grievous words” which will as certainly “stir up strife.” Your employer may be wrong; but if so your vindication can do no good; but very likely she is right. Whoever employs the services of others has an undoubted right to prescribe the way in which those services shall be performed; you are bound, in all lawful things, to pay implicit obedience. And a little right consideration of the anxieties inseparable from business, from which the assistants are happily exempt, will induce a kindly feeling which will lead you to avoid increasing the vexations of those about you. In this, as in all else, follow the golden rule, and be sure that you will reap the reward of your conduct.

Industry, sense, and temper may be considered the three requisites for success in business. Next to them we must rank aptitude for calculation. No one who is not an expert arithmetician need hope to do any good in trade. It is a great pity that the science of book-keeping is not made a more prominent study with the young ladies of the present day. Very many would be earning liberal salaries who can now barely find bread. Why should not an Englishwoman be as accomplished a book-keeper as her French sister? How seldom in Paris do we see men acting as cashiers or book-keepers in any large business. There, women are allowed to be far more efficient, more safe, and more trustworthy. Hundreds of Parisian women earn liberal salaries as accountants. Why should we not do the same? Men are required for other labours. Every day they are called on to fulfil more important duties to the state and to themselves. Why should not women fit themselves for such occupations as are not incompatible with their sex and their abilities? It seems to me a libel on both sexes when men. are handling ribbons and gauzes, earning women's wages, and doing women's work, while women cannot find employment at all.

It is a state of things that must terminate if it is not to result in misery to thousands. At this moment, when tens of thousands of our strongest are engaged in war, when like numbers are departing for the colonies, when labour of every sort is becoming too much for the number of hands to perform it, it is incumbent on every young girl who does not possess a fortune to find some channel for the exercise of the faculties with which she is endowed ; and, whether in her own family or in that of a stranger, to have some fixed pursuit in life which shall render that life itself a blessing to her and to all with whom she is connected.

And let no Englishwoman in selecting her occupation forget that the pride and boast of her country is its COMMERCE. That all the greatest institutions of our land, its schools, its hospitals, its libraries, its wealth at home, and the civilisation it has diffused abroad, it owes to its merchants and its trade. In remembering all this, she will cease to think it a degradation to be termed a tradeswoman.

Y

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CHAP. XIV.

HINTS TO GOVERNESSES.-HOW TO OBTAIN A

SITUATION.

“ A chiel's amang ye, takin' notes,

An' faith he'll prent 'em.”

Having decided that the career of a governess is one for which you are qualified as well by the control you possess over your temper, the steadiness of your principles, and the cultivation of your mind, as by your scholastic acquirements and vigorous health, the first step towards entering your career is, to “obtain a situation." Perhaps this is so obvious you may think the remark very unnecessary; however, as my book is intended as a guide to the reader, and on this subject, even more than any other, I speak from actual experience, and from a knowledge of the difficulty of procuring a suitable situation, I propose to notice the various methods by which engagements are usually obtained.

In the first place, most of you have friends, who may be in a position to interest themselves among their connexions, to obtain for you a situation. Some who have not a large acquaintance, or whose friends may not have the power to aid them, advertise through the medium of the papers. Others, again, seeing advertisements of “Governess Institution and Governess Agency,” in the "Times” and other papers, apply to one or more of the parties so advertising. It is my wish to give a candid opinion of the advantages and disadvantages of these different plans.

The first commends itself especially so far as that you have none of the trouble and expense of advertising, and you are also probably met with a feeling somewhat more friendly than you could expect from entire strangers. A lady who is already in some degree acquainted with yourself and family through mutual friends may feel from the beginning an interest in your welfare, and be disposed to treat you with more indulgence than she would a person of whose antecedents she is in ignorance. So far it is well.