She had from her infancy been extremely fond of drawing, and desiring to be instructed in that agreeable art, one of the first masters was procured for her: she had in a very short time succeeded in copying, with tolerable correctness, the first things he gave her to do; and the greatest hopes were entertained of her making a great proficiency in what she appeared to prefer to every other amusement. The master now gave her some other drawings to copy, which required a little more attention and study, and she began to find difficulties in her way, which she had not foreseen: she tried them twice—they were pretty well, but not perfect; a few faults still remained, which her master pointed out to her. Jemima concluded she never should do them better; and as he insisted that she could not proceed till she had made herself mistress of the trifles he objected to, she determined to give up all thoughts of drawing figure, and apply herself entirely to landscape.
She was delighted with this new employment; her master had the sweetest drawings of trees, cottages, and rivers, that had ever been seen! She should never be tired of copying such pretty things, and she was sure she should not meet with half the difficulties which were to be found in drawing figure.
She made outlines of several trees, and had she but been possessed of perseverance enough to have perfected herself in that part, before she attempted to go farther, all would have been easy and pleasant; but Jemima knew nothing of perseverance or patience, and insisted on having a finished landscape to do directly; and the master, to shew her how incapable she was of executing such a thing, indulged her in her fancy: but when he endeavoured to explain to her the nature of perspective, light and shadow, and several other rules necessary for her to understand, Jemima dropped the pencil from her fingers. She had not perfectly comprehended his meaning, and wanted resolution to question him, and endeavour to make it clearer, and once more concluded she never should be able to make any thing of it, and that it would be much more prudent to turn to some other pursuit.
Accordingly the drawing-master was dismissed; and all the money her mamma had paid him for his attendance, for quantities of paper, pencils, chalk, and (which was of much more consequence, and which no sum could recal) the loss of her own precious time, were thrown away to no purpose. But Jemima did not mean to stop here; she should do very well without drawing, she said, and she would give all the time she had intended to employ that way entirely to music, and had no doubt, but that by the time she was sixteen she should be quite a proficient; was very sorry she had so long neglected her piano forte, and requested of her master that he would bring her some better music than the simple easy lessons she had been playing, assuring him that she intended to apply very seriously. But, alas! she had no better success in this than in her drawing; difficulties obtruded themselves whatever she turned to, and when she quitted the piano for the harp, and from the harp returned to the piano, she found herself just in the same predicament.
The music was given up for the French and Italian languages, geography, and botany, all of which ended in the same way: nothing was to be learnt without a sufficient stock of perseverance and resolution to surmount the obstacles which lay in the way; and as the smallest was quite enough to stop Jemima's progress, it is not to be wondered at (as she was allowed to have her own way in every thing) that at the age of sixteen, though what would have been a comfortable independence to many, had been spent upon her education, that she knew no one thing in the world.
At twenty she had but too much cause to repent of her folly: her mother, by lawsuits, and other unforeseen events, lost the greater part of her fortune, and was obliged to retire into a remote part of the country; and in that lonely place what a comfort and amusement would she have found in music or drawing, had she but endeavoured, when she had so good an opportunity, to perfect herself in either! But she had nothing to do, no means of employing herself agreeably, but spent her time in loitering about from one window to another, tired of herself, and tiring every body who saw her.
THE TRIFLER.
William was come home to spend the holidays; but he had scarcely time to speak to his papa and mamma, before he ran out to visit his poultry, his rabbits, and his little garden; and from thence to the village, to see his nurse, and then to the cottage of old John, who had taught him how to catch birds, make little fishing-nets, and how to take care of his tame rabbits.
He found the poor old man in the utmost grief and consternation; a recruiting party had come into the village, and had enticed his son away from him. He had enlisted: he was gone from his aged father, who had no other comfort in the world: he depended upon him for his support, for he was a strong, healthy, hard-working young man; and John was grown old and infirm, and could no longer work to maintain himself.