Her sex, did I say?  What honour to the other does this imply!  When one might challenge the proudest pedant of them all, to say he has been disciplined into greater improvement, than she had made from the mere force of genius and application.  But it is demonstrable to all who know how to make observations on their acquaintance of both sexes, arrogant as some are of their superficialities, that a lady at eighteen, take the world through, is more prudent and conversable than a man at twenty-five.  I can prove this by nineteen instances out of twenty in my own knowledge.  Yet how do these poor boasters value themselves upon the advantages their education gives them!  Who has not seen some one of them, just come from the university, disdainfully smile at a mistaken or ill-pronounced word from a lady, when her sense has been clear, and her sentiments just; and when he could not himself utter a single sentence fit to be repeated, but what he had borrowed from the authors he had been obliged to study, as a painful exercise to slow and creeping parts?  But how I digress: 

This excellent young lady used to say, ’it was incredible to think what might be done by early rising, and by long days well filled up.’

It may be added, that she had calculated according to the practice of too many, she had actually lived more years at sixteen, than they had at twenty-six.

She was of opinion, ’that no one could spend their time properly, who did not live by some rule:  who did not appropriate the hours, as nearly as might be, to particular purposes and employments.’

In conformity to this self-set lesson, the usual distribution of the twenty-four hours, when left to her own choice, were as follows: 

      For rest she allotted six hours only.

She thought herself not so well, and so clear in her intellects, [so much alive, she used to say,] if she exceeded this proportion.  If she slept not, she chose to rise sooner.  And in winter had her fire laid, and a taper ready burning to light it; not loving to give trouble to the servants, ‘whose harder work, and later hours of going to bed,’ she used to say, ‘required consideration.’

I have blamed her for her greater regard to them than to herself.  But this was her answer; ’I have my choice, who can wish for more?  Why should I oppress others, to gratify myself?  You see what free-will enables one to do; while imposition would make a light burden heavy.’

      Her first three morning hours

were generally passed in her study, and in her closet duties:  and were occasionally augmented by those she saved from rest:  and in these passed her epistolary amusements.

      Two hours she generally allotted to domestic management.

These, at different times of the day, as occasions required; all the housekeeper’s bills, in ease of her mother, passing through her hands.  For she was a perfect mistress of the four principal rules of arithmetic.