Jemima—­my little friend Jemima—­I lived to see her a woman too.  From her infancy she had never evinced the tastes and feelings of a child.  Intense reflection, keen and impatient sensibility and an unlimited desire to know, marked her from the earliest years as a very extraordinary child; dislike to the plays and exercises of childhood made her unpleasing to her companions, and, to superficial observers, melancholy; but this was amply contradicted by the eager vivacity of her intellect and feeling, when called forth by things beyond the usual compass of her age.  Every thing in Jemima gave promise of extraordinary talent and distinguished character.  This her parents saw, and were determined to counteract.  They had made up their minds what a woman should be, and were determined Jemima should be nothing else.  Every thing calculated to call forth her powers was kept out of her way, and childish occupations forced on her in their stead.  The favorite maxim was, to occupy her mind with common things; she was made to romp, and to dance and to play; to read story books, and make dolls’ clothes.  Her physical powers were thus occupied; but where was her mind the while?  Feeding itself with fancies, for want of truths; drawing false conclusions, forming wrong judgments, and brooding over its own mistakes, for want of a judicious occupation of its activities.

Another maxim was, to keep Jemima ignorant of her own capacity, lest she should set up for a genius, and be undomesticated.  She was told she had none, and was left in ignorance of what she was capable, and for what she was responsible.  Made to believe that her fine feelings were oddities, her expansive thoughts absurdities, and her love of knowledge unfeminine and ungraceful, she kept them to herself, and became reserved, timid, and artificial.

Nobody could prevent Jemima’s acquiring knowledge; she saw every thing, reflected upon every thing, and learned from every thing; but without guide, and without discretion, she gathered the honey and the gall together, and knew not which was which.  She was sent to school that she might learn to play, and fetched home that she might learn to be useful.  In the former place she was shunned as an oddity, because she preferred to learn; and, finding herself disliked without deserving it, encouraged herself to independence by disliking every body.  In the latter, she sewed her work awry, while she made a couplet to the moon, and unpicked it while she made another; and being told she did every thing ill, believed it, and became indolent and careless to do any thing.  Consumed, meanwhile, by the restless workings of her mind, and tasked to exercise for which its delicate frame-work was unfit, her person became faded, worn, and feeble.