The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"Well, St. Paul says all God's people are called to be saints. We will ask Mrs. Cropsey about it; she is coming to-morrow, you know."

But Mrs. Cropsey was not destined to be any great help to us when she came. She was a pretty little woman in widow's weeds, who was so obviously scared at the charge she had undertaken that our awe of her was speedily changed into compassion. It was well for her that we had previously been taught obedience and docility, for I am sure we should never have learned them from her. She was an admirable musician, and sung charmingly, but as to any thing else, we were as able to instruct her as she us.

One thing she did teach us, however, and that was to read English properly. She had a very ladylike way of speaking, free from provincialisms and accent, and under her tuition, we speedily got rid both of our French ways—Gallicisms, Mr. Lilburne termed them—and the Northumbrian tones and forms of expression which we had engrafted upon them. We read aloud to her in the poets and in some history of England—I forget whose—only know it was dreadfully dry and stupid, but by good luck we found the great folio of Stowe's "Annales" among the books in our book-cases, and that most entertaining writer got us over our dislike to the study of history.

Mr. Lilburne, finding that we had a thirst for knowledge, proposed to give us lessons himself in geography and arithmetic twice or thrice a week. We soon settled into ways almost as regular as those we were used to at St. Jean. We studied and practised in the morning under Mrs. Cropsey's superintendence, (I was more interested in my music after I found out that I had a voice,) devoted two or three hours to needlework after dinner, walked out with Mrs. Cropsey, who, by the way, was not nearly so entertaining a companion as good Mrs. Crump, and spent our evening as before—studying our Bibles.

We did not find in Mrs. Cropsey the help we had hoped for in this latter pursuit. It is true we read a chapter with her every morning according to the calendar, but she did not encourage us to ask questions about what we read, and, indeed, evidently disliked to have us do so. She was one of those numerous persons who make use of the Scriptures and certain religious forms as if they were a kind of spell or incantation to bring good luck upon them, rather than a real intercourse with a real person. She had never been taught to think for herself in any thing, and had taken all her opinions, if such they could be called, from her father and her husband. She was terrified at the very name of Mr. Wesley, and besought us, even with tears, not to become Methodists, of which there was at present no great danger, seeing that we did not even know what a Methodist was.

"They are subverters of the Church and State, my dears," said she. "What can happen when the commonest people are taught to think that they may know their sins forgiven, and they themselves children of God, but that they should think themselves equal to the best in the land?"

"It does seem as if that might be true," remarked Amabel, thoughtfully, "because if one was really the child of God, one could not very well hold any higher rank. Perhaps that is the reason the king of France objected so much to the Protestants."

"But I think the Catholic Church teaches much the same thing," said I. "You know that even in France, a man who is a priest may command the king himself to do him reverence, though the priest may be a bourgeois or even a peasant by birth."

"And yet there are many convents where none, but the daughters of noble families are admitted," said Amabel. "It was so in our house in former times. Don't you know how, when it was reformed under the Mother Angelique, a house of the same order was founded at Toulon for the daughters of bourgeois? But I don't believe Mr. Wesley wishes to subvert the government, Mrs. Cropsey. Kesiah Lee says he prays for the king, and so do the preachers."

"My dear, don't speak of him," said Mrs. Cropsey, nervously. "I am sure such doings as his are not proper, or they would have been found out before. Besides, my late lamented husband knew him at Oxford, and he has told me often and often that he and his brother, Charles, belonged to a knot of young men who used to do all kinds of odd things—visiting the people in the jails and almshouses, and praying with them, and receiving the sacrament every Sunday. Why, Mr. Cropsey said there was a man in prison who was hung for forgery—he wrote a man's name for the sake of getting ten pounds—and Mr. Wesley went to see him, and talked and read to him, till he actually made him believe that his sins were pardoned, and he was going straight to paradise."