Times'
newspaper made some ten or twelve years ago, of a most shameful fraud
practised upon governesses, by which they were induced to deposit a sum
equivalent to their travelling expenses from England to some town on the
Continent, as a guarantee to the employer, they will have discovered
the gentleman with the two sons to be educated--the traveller in Syria,
the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, the Anglo-Indian who expects eight hundred
pounds in two months, but has a present and pressing necessity for
forty.

The governess fraud was ingenious. It was done in this way: An
advertisement appeared in the 'Times,' setting forth that an English
gentleman, travelling with his family abroad, wanted a governess--the
conditions liberal, the requirements of a high order. The family
in question, who mixed with the very best society on the Continent,
required that the governess should be a lady of accomplished manners,
and one in every respect qualified for that world of fashion to which
she would be introduced as a member of the advertiser's family. The
advertiser, however, found that all the English ladies who had hitherto
filled this situation in his family had, through the facilities thus
presented them of entrance into life, made very advantageous marriages;
and to protect himself against the loss entailed by the frequent call on
him for travelling expenses--bringing out new candidates for the hands
of princes and grand-dukes--he proposed that the accepted governess
should deposit with him a sum--say fifty pounds--equivalent to the
charge of the journey; and which, if she married, should be confiscated
to the benefit of her employer.

The scheme was very ingenious; it was, in fact, a lottery in which you
only paid for your ticket when you had drawn a prize. Till the lucky
number turned up, you never parted with your money. Was there ever any
such bribe held forth to a generation of unmarried and marriageable
women? There was everything that could captivate the mind: the tour
on the Continent--the family who loved society and shared it so
generously--the father so parental in his kindness, and who evidently
gave the governess the benediction of a parent on the day she may have
married the count; and all secured for what--for fifty pounds? No; but
for the deposit, the mere storing up of fifty pounds in a strong box;
for if, after two years, the lady neither married nor wished to remain,
she could claim her money and go her way.

T