The
merchant who is from home all day, the lady receiving visitors or
working slippers in her nicely-furnished parlor, cannot be quite so
sure that their demands, or the duties involved in them, are clearly
understood, nor estimate the temptations to prevarication.
It is shocking to think to what falsehoods human beings like ourselves
will resort, to excuse a love of amusement, to hide ill-health, while
they see us indulging freely in the one, yielding lightly to the
other; and yet we have, or ought to have, far more resources in either
temptation than they. For us it is hard to resist, to give up going to
the places where we should meet our most interesting companions, or do
our work with an aching brow. But we have not people over us whose
careless, hasty anger drives us to seek excuses for our failures; if
so, perhaps,--perhaps; who knows?--we, the better-educated, rigidly,
immaculately true as we are at present, _might_ tell falsehoods.
Perhaps we might, if things were given us to do which we had never
seen done, if we were surrounded by new arrangements in the nature of
which no one instructed us. All this we must think of before we can be
of much use.
We have spoken of the nursery-maid as _the_ hired domestic with
whom her mistress, or even the master, is likely to become acquainted.
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