A conversation between the clergyman and a domestic.
My Friends:
In my former letter I told you how the good minister succeeded in persuading the shipwrecked company to adopt the rules given in the Bible, and the comfort and prosperity that followed this course. I also told you that the minister was requested by the company to spend all his time in visiting every part of the estate, to converse with all who were disposed to be discontented, or indolent, or unsubmissive to the rules.
I will now tell you a little about the way this good man managed to promote peace, contentment, and industry. In the first place they all agreed to come together one day each week to hear the minister explain those rules in the Bible that taught them the duties they owed to God, to themselves and to their neighbours.
Many of them had never been properly instructed in their duties, and were entirely ignorant of the Bible. So, on these days of meeting, he used to spend a part of the time in reading portions of the Bible and in proving its Divine authority. He told them when it was written, and how it was collected and preserved, and how it was safely and correctly transmitted to them. He showed them too, that it contained not only rules for making them happy in this world, but that it taught them that they were to live forever after their bodies died, and that their eternal happiness depended on the character and habits they formed in this short life. He described the character they must form in order to be happy in the eternal world, and painted all the happiness that would follow to those who formed such a character, and the dreadful miseries that would come upon all who died without forming such a character. He also took great pains, at these times, to teach them how to perform all their daily duties properly, and showed them that this was one way to form that character that fitted them to die.
Sometimes he preached on the duty and advantages of industry and economy; sometimes on the ways to promote cheerfulness, and contentment; sometimes on the duties owed to overseers and rulers; sometimes on the advantages of system, order and neatness; sometimes on the duty of taking proper care of the health, and the ways in which it should be done; sometimes on the duty of kind, courteous, and respectful manners; sometimes on the duty of improving their minds by reading and study. Indeed there was no duty which he found they were in any danger of neglecting, that he did not teach them the proper way of performing it. And after teaching any of these duties, he always knelt down with them, and prayed to God to help all of them to obey the rules he had given, on all these subjects. For this good man never found that they needed instruction on any duty, when he could not find a plenty of rules and directions about the matter in the Bible.
After preaching to them thus, when all together, he used to go around, and talk with every one separately, and find out whether or not each was trying to follow his advice.
One day after he had been down in the fields, talking to some of the farmers, he came up through one of the beautiful gardens, and as he passed a white marble fountain, he found one of the girls who worked in the kitchen, sitting under the shade by it, looking discontented and sullen. So he went up to her and spoke in a kind and pleasant way, and then the following conversation took place.
“Well, Sarah,” said he, “what makes you look so displeased and uncomfortable?”
Sarah. It is because I do not think I am fairly treated. I cannot see, for my part, why I have not as good a right to sit up in the parlours to sew and read, when I have got my work done, as the girls who are allowed to sit there. They are no better than I am, and yet they wear fine clothes, and sit in beautiful rooms, and have nothing to do but sew on fine things. And here I have to stay in the kitchen and work, work, work all day long, and wear homely clothes, and have the poorest rooms, and be ordered about by others, instead of doing as I please. And just now, when I went up to sit a little while with those who were sewing