EDUCATIONAL.
Chatterbox.—Your acquirements are satisfactory, and might gain for you perhaps £30 per annum. But these are to be weighed against two serious drawbacks—extreme youth, and consequent lack of weight and authority with your pupils, and complete lack of experience in reading their several characters and bodily condition, and the modifications and changes of method requisite to suit these different subjects under your training. Teaching lessons is but a small part of the duties of a governess. The characters of her pupils have to be carefully read and moulded, their manners and habits trained according to those of polite society, and she should discover what natural gifts should be cultivated and what studies should be remitted, more or less. At sixteen you are scarcely more than a child yourself, and quite such in inexperience. Thus, you are really only fit for a visiting governess, teaching under the direction of the mother; and if you take a residential situation, it could only be at a low salary.
Desiree.—If you wish to prepare yourself for being a nurse at home, we recommend you a careful study of a small manual, often named for the purpose, “Sick Nursing at Home” (L. U. Gill, 170, Strand, W.C.). When you could be examined on that you will have made great progress towards efficiency. You do not name your age. Had you done so, we could have advised you further.
Daughter of Gentleman Farmer (Dublin).—If you have artistic taste and can design, and, in addition, have a delicate touch, write either to the City and Guilds Technical Institute, Exhibition-road, South Kensington, S.W., or to the Polytechnic, Regent-street, W., where classes for wood-carving are held. Address the secretary in both cases. If you think of training for the teaching of children under the Kindergarten system, there are many schools for the purpose. Write to the Misses Crombie, 21, Stockwell-road, S.W., with a view to entering the college established by the British and Foreign School Society. Or else to the secretary, Home and Colonial Training College, in Gray’s Inn-road, W.C.