by
their industry when he was busy. They thought the maid might take
care of him in the gout as she did before; for they fancied that
nursing was a coarse and servile employment; and as to their skill
in ciphering he soon found, to his cost, that though they knew how
to _spend_ both pounds, shillings, and pence, yet they did not know
how so well to cast them up. Indeed it is to be regretted that women
in general, especially in the middle class, are so little grounded
in so indispensable, solid, and valuable an acquirement as
arithmetic.

Mrs. Bragwell being one day very busy in preparing a great dinner
for the neighbors, ventured to request her daughters to assist in
making the pastry. They asked her with a scornful smile, whether she
had sent them to a boarding school to learn to cook; and added, that
they supposed she would expect them next to make hasty-puddings for
the hay-makers. So saying, they coolly marched off to their music.
When the mother found her girls too polite to be of any use, she
would take comfort in observing how her parlor was set out with
their filagree and flowers, their embroidery and cut paper. They
spent the morning in bed, the noon in dressing, the evening at the
harpsichord, and the night in reading novels.

With all these fine qualifications it is easy to suppose, that as
they despised their sober duties, they no less despised their plain
neighbors. When they could not get to a horse-race, a petty-ball, or
a strolling play, with some company as idle and as smart as
themselves, they were driven for amusement to the circulating
library. Jack, the plow-boy, on whom they had now put a livery
jacket, was employed half his time in trotting backward and forward
with the most wretched trash the little neighboring bookshop could
furnish. The choice was often left to Jack, who could not read, but
who had general orders to bring all the new things, and a great many
of them.

It was a misfortune, that at the school at which they had been bred,
and at some others, there was no system of education which had any
immediate reference to the station of life to which the girls
chiefly belonged. As persons in the middle line, for want of that
acquaintance with books, and with life and manners, which the great
possess, do not always see the connection between remote
consequences and their causes, the evils of a corrupt and
inappropriate system of education do not strike _them_ so forcibly;
and provided _t