Of course this
statement does not include persons of large fortune, but it does
include very many whose rank in society would make such a mode of
life quite impossible with us. I can hardly imagine a
contrivance more effectual for ensuring the insignificance of a
woman, than marrying her at seventeen, and placing her in a
boarding-house. Nor can I easily imagine a life of more uniform
dulness for the lady herself; but this certainly is a matter of
taste. I have heard many ladies declare that it is "just quite
the perfection of comfort to have nothing to fix for oneself."
Yet despite these assurances I always experienced a feeling
which hovered between pity and contempt, when I contemplated
their mode of existence.
How would a newly-married Englishwoman endure it, her head and
her heart full of the one dear scheme--
"Well ordered home, _his_ dear delight to make?"
She must rise exactly in time to reach the boarding table at the
hour appointed for breakfast, or she will get a stiff bow from
the lady president, cold coffee, and no egg. I have been
sometimes greatly amused upon these occasions by watching a
little scene in which the bye-play had much more meaning than the
words uttered. The fasting, but tardy lady, looks round the
table, and having ascertained that there was no egg left, says
distinctly, "I will take an egg if you please." But as this is
addressed to no one in particular, no one in particular answers
it, unless it happen that her husband is at table before her, and
then he says, "There are no eggs, my dear.
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