The passing shadow, or the gleam of sunshine, the half-expressed sneer, or the tempests of angry passion, the words of love and flattery, or the cruel insinuations of envy and jealousy, may pale your cheek, or call into it a deeper flush; may kindle your eye with indignation, or melt its rays in sorrow; but they must not, for all that, turn you aside one step from the path which your calm and deliberate judgment had before marked out for you:  your insensibility to such annoyances as those I have described would show an unfeminine hardness of character; your being influenced by them would strengthen into habit any natural unfitness for the high duties you may probably be called on to fulfil.  When in future years you may be appealed to, by those who depend on you alone, for guidance, for counsel, for support in warding off, or bearing bravely, dangers, difficulties, and sorrows, you will have cause for bitter repentance if you are unable to answer such appeals; nor can you answer them successfully unless, in the present hours of comparative calm, you are, in daily trifles, habituating yourself to the exercise of self-control.  Every day thus wasted now will in future cause you years of unavailing regret.

FOOTNOTES: 

[56] Matt. v. 48.

[57] Sir Philip Sidney.

[58] Eph. iv. 26.

[59] Ex. xx. 12.

[60] Eph. v. 33.

[61] Isa. xxxii. 17.

[62]

    Maria.  How can we love?—­

Giovanna (interrupting).  Mainly, by hearing none Decry the object, then by cherishing The good we see in it, and overlooking What is less pleasant in the paths of life.  All have some virtue if we leave it them In peace and quiet, all may lose some part By sifting too minutely good and bad.  The tenderer and the timider of creatures Often desert the brood that has been handled, Or turned about, or indiscreetly looked at.  The slightest touches, touching constantly, Irritate and inflame.

LANDOR’S Giovanna and Andrea.

[63] Miss Edgeworth says that proverbs are vulgar because they are common sense.

[64] Emerson.

LETTER VII.

ECONOMY.

Perhaps there is no lesson that needs to be more watchfully and continually impressed on the young and generous heart than the difficult one of economy.  There is no virtue that in such natures requires more vigilant self-control and self-denial, besides the exercise of a free judgment, uninfluenced by the excitement of feeling.

To you this virtue will be doubly difficult, because you have so long watched its unpleasant manifestations in a distorted form.  You are exposed to danger from that which has perverted many notions of right and wrong; you have so long heard things called by false names that you are inclined to turn away in disgust from a noble reality.  You have been accustomed to hear the name of economy given to penuriousness and meanness, so that now, the wounded feelings and the refined tastes of your nature having been excited to disgust by this system of falsehood, you will find it difficult to realize in economy a virtue that joins to all the noble instincts of generosity the additional features of strong-minded self-control.