As she had an eye, no less to the social pleasure, than to the pecuniary profit of the undertaking, she admitted only seven, at a time, to the privilege of her tuition.
These were all young ladies, who had previously received the first rudiments of learning, and been initiated into the polite accomplishments, which embellish virtue and soften the cares of human life. They had generally lived in the metropolis, and had acquired the graces of a fashionable deportment; but they possessed different tempers and dispositions, which had been variously, and, in some respects, erroneously managed.
To cultivate the expanding flowers, and to prune the juvenile eccentricities, which were disseminated among these tender plants; or, to speak without a figure, to extend and purify their ideas, to elevate and refine their affections, to govern and direct their passions, required an eye, watchful, and a hand, skilful as those of the judicious Mrs. Williams.
While her judgment and prudence aided the useful acquisitions of the mind, a sprightly fancy and a cheerful disposition, regulated by experience and discretion, qualified her to enter, at once, with becoming dignity and condescending ease, into all their concerns; to participate their pleasures; while, with candor and mildness, she reproved their errors, detected their follies, and facilitated their amendment.
As the young ladies had finished their school education, before Mrs. Williams received them to her mansion, her instructions were more especially designed to polish the mental part, to call forth the dormant virtues, to unite and arrange the charms of person and mind, to inspire a due sense of decorum and propriety, and to instil such principles of piety, morality, benevolence, prudence and economy, as might be useful through life.
Their time was, accordingly, disposed in a manner most conducive to the attainment of these objects. Every part of it was employed to some valuable purpose; “for idleness,” Mrs. Williams observed, “is the rust of the mind.”
Whatever tended to enlarge, inform, improve, or amuse, she supposed worthy their attention.
She particularly endeavored to domesticate them; to turn their thoughts to the beneficial and necessary qualifications of private life; often inculcating, that
“Nothing lovelier can be found in woman
Than to study household good;”