[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

I could never yet, to this blessed hour, satisfy
myself whether Catalina was most glad or most
sorry at thus carrying her point. At any rate it
was one of Pyrrhus's victories, and she never wished
to gain such another. She was now free to indulge
the luxury of grief; but grief, like all other luxuries,
soon ceases to be a luxury. It is one of the most
tiresome things in the world for a constancy. It does
very well for a burst or a paroxysm; but for every
day, and all day long—for every night, and all the
livelong night—human nature cannot stand it, and
seeks refuge from the carking, gnawing fiend in the
performance of its duties to itself and to others.
Blessed necessity!

Catalina forced herself to enter upon the employments
and duties of domestic life; and whoever seeks
employment will soon take an interest in what they
are doing. There are a thousand little acts of duty,
or kindness, or attention which woman, and only
woman, can perform, and which neither interfere
with the delicacy of a lady, nor the acquirement and
practice of elegant accomplishments. The union,
I confess, is not common; but I have seen women,
and thank heaven for it, who united both the will
and the power to be useful with the utmost polish
of mind and manners, and the highest intellectual

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

attainments becoming the sex. I wish I could
meet a few more of them. But if they were common,
they would no longer be a rarity; and if they
were no longer a rarity, nobody would prize them.
Doubtless it is best as it is. Let us bow with humble
resignation, and thank our stars, as menfolk, that
there are so many of the sex who are not all angel;
for if there were more of them quite perfect,
where under the sun should we find men worthy
of them.

Catalina was calculated to be both a blessing and
an ornament to her home, a jewel in the bosom of a
husband, or she would never have been chosen as
our heroine from all the rest of her sex. Though
not perfect, she was a perfect woman; and whoever
is not satisfied with that, let him die the death of
a bachelor. There was a library too in the mansion
of Colonel Vancour, which, though principally
composed of majestic Latin tomes of the Dutch
school, was here and there relieved by works of a
lighter nature. There were but few novels, but
being a rarity, they were the more seducing, and
being right excellent, they would bear to be read
frequently. They did not depend altogether on the
momentary excitement of the story, but possessed
latent beauties which gradually opened themselves
like rosebuds to the morning sun at every new perusal.
Besides these, Catalina had music and friends,
and the liberality of her father allowed her the
means of procuring every rational enjoyment.

What a shame to be unhappy with so many
sources of happiness! Yet our heroine was not
happy. There was one thing wanting, and that
was a want of the heart. It was the companion of
her childhood; the choice of her youth; the

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

preserver of her life. She often visited the spot where
the terrible conflict with Captain Pipe took place,
and always returned with renewed regrets; she
could not sit at her window and look into the garden
without recalling to mind the perils she had encountered,
and the life she owed to the watchful
tenderness of her lover; nor could she walk in any
direction without something or other presenting itself
which brought him to her remembrance clothed
with every claim to her tenderness and gratitude.
But she had lost him, and that by her own weak
vanity.

Yet she did not yield to the weakness of her
heart. She tried every resource, and finally that
of teaching children to read and write. During her
absence in New-York, Madam Vancour had been
seized with a passion for doing good on a great scale—
a dangerous propensity in woman, because it is
apt to degenerate into the weakness of indiscriminate
charity. To relieve the distresses of mankind without
encouraging their vices, their idleness, and extravagance
is a nice and delicate task; it requires a
knowledge of the dark side of the world and a selfdenial
which women happily seldom attain; and
hence it is that the large share they have taken of
late in the distribution of public and private charities
has without doubt been one of the main causes of
the vast increase of idleness, poverty, and their
consequent vices, which cannot but be evident to
every observer.

With the best intentions in the world, mingled, as
all our best intentions are, with a little alloy of vanity
and self-applause, Madam Vancour resolved to
institute a school for the gratuitous education of the
children of the neighbouring poor. Not that there

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

were any poor people in the neighbourhood that
really required her charity in this respect; for riches
and poverty were not at that early period so disproportionately
distributed as they are at present. But
still, though all were able by industry and economy
to afford their children such instruction as was
necessary to their modes of life (and all beyond is not
only superfluous, but pernicious), still this new-born
desire to do good whispered Madam Vancour that it
would be very charitable to relieve these people
of the burden of educating their own offspring. Accordingly
she set about it with enthusiasm; and her
first step was to convince these worthy folks, who
had hitherto managed to get on very well, that it
was a great hardship for them to be obliged to deprive
themselves of certain of the little luxuries
of life to pay for the schooling of their children.

“Vat! mine own lawfully-pegotten shildren?”
exclaimed old Van Bombeler, who got his living by
making flag-bottomed chairs; “why, who den should
pay for dere schooling, if not me? Ain't I dere
fader?”

But Madam Vancour soon brought Van Bombeler
to reason, by showing how he could buy six quarts
of pure Jamaica rum, and as many pounds of sugar,
besides a new gown for Mrs. Van Bombeler, with
the money it cost him for the schooling of his three
children. “Duyvel!” quoth Van Bombeler, “why,
I never tought of dat before!” So he consented to
madame's desirable proposal. In this manner the
good lady—for good she certainly was in the abstract,
though I fear not practically so in this instance—
in this manner did she persuade the good
people her neighbours to relinquish the honest, nay,
proud gratification of educating their own children

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

by the sweat of their own brows. There was one,
and only one, sturdy Dutchman who rejected her
benevolence, and insisted, nay, swore, that nobody
should put their charity upon him. “I'll work my
fingers to de bone; and den, if I can't send dem to
school, what's de reason, I should like to know, if
dey can't pay for dere own schooling when dey
grow pig enough?” But madame had her revenge—
she took away his trade of whisk-brooms, by setting
up another man in the business; who, as he
lived in one of Colonel Vancour's small houses and
paid no rent, ruined the other by underselling him.
By this means the obstinate fool was brought to
reason; and finally his poverty if not his will consented
to have his children educated upon charity.

But these difficulties in procuring objects for the
exercise of her new-born virtue soon vanished.
Custom by degrees reconciled the good people to
the degradation of depending on charity for what they
could procure by their own labour; the numerous
examples which in good time presented themselves;
the countenance of madame, to whom they all looked
up with respectful deference; and above all the
means of self-gratification which this diversion of
the fruits of their labour produced; all tended to
consummate this salutary revolution of opinion. It
was surprising to see, in the course of a little while,
how anxious everybody was to get rid of the burden
of educating their children; and with what singular
satisfaction Master Van Bombeler boasted that he
could now afford to drink twice as much as he did
before this blessed invention of charity. In a little
time a great improvement was observed at the Flats;
the children all looked up to Madam Vancour instead
of their ignorant parents; and the parents

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

began to wear clothes of a better fashion; to spend
a little more time abroad and a little less at home;
to take a great interest in all matters that did not
concern them; and to elevate their noses much
higher in the scale of creation—now that they began
to see into the natural and indefeasible claim
which everybody's children had to be educated by
anybody, just as it pleased God. But the most salutary
consequence was, that the parents began gradually
to take less interest in their children, conceiving
them to belong altogether to society; and, by in a
great degree leaving them to the care of others, happily
relieved them from the contagion of their bad
example.

Previous section

Next section