Transcribed from the 1866 T. Edmondson edition by DavidPrice.
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A WORD IN SEASON,
FROMA
FAITHFUL FRIEND,
ON AVERY
SERIOUS SUBJECT.
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By the Author of“Kind Words, to the Young Women,etc.,”
“A Mother’s Care, &c.”
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(This Tract hasthe approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury.)
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M.DCCC.LXVI.
Dear Patty,
When I had put things straightafter I got home last night, and could sit down quietly and thinkover our strange conversation, my heart sank within me. Iwas so hurried for fear of being late for the coach, while wewere talking, and so grieved and surprised by what you told me,that I could not, there and then, go much beyond the sad newsitself. Dear heart! what sorrow and shame in a decentfamily! And so nice a girl too, as your cousinseemed. Her father will scarce ever lift up his head afterit, to say nothing of a poor child brought into the world with astain on its birth, and without a right to a father’s care;both mother and child a reproach to each other.
But after all, it is not so much that, as what you said alongof it that has gone so sorely against my heart. Why, mydear child, where have you heard such things? Whoever it isthat has put them into your head has some bad design upon you,you may be quite sure. If it be a man, be he who he will,he means you harm. Man or woman, they are no decentbody’s thoughts, at any rate. Only following nature,indeed! You did not think that was an excuse when theservant girl took your ribbon, for all it was nature p. 4enough in herto like a bit of finery. What! and are we to likenourselves to the beasts that perish? I don’t knowwhether it is most wicked or most foolish to make a pretence thattheir ways can ever be a guide to us. It is setting the assto drive the man, for sure, if we are to learn from them. Has not God made man quite different from the brutes? Hasnot He made him in His own image, and given him laws to keep, andreason and conscience to guide him in keeping them? Thecommonest things of every day shew us on what a different footingwe reckon ourselves. We do not punish the animal thatbreaks through our fence and eats our hay-grass, for it has hadn