The Parents Assistant | Page 5

Maria Edgeworth
bad examples, it would not be advisable to introduce despicable and vicious characters in books intended for their improvement. But in real life they MUST see vice, and it is best that they should be early shocked with the representation of what they are to avoid. There is a great deal of difference between innocence and ignorance.
To prevent the precepts of morality from tiring the ear and the mind, it was necessary to make the stories in which they are introduced in some measure dramatic; to keep alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy. At the same time, care has been taken to avoid inflaming the imagination, or exciting a restless spirit of adventure, by exhibiting false views of life, and creating hopes which, in the ordinary course of things, cannot be realized.

CONTENTS.
THE ORPHANS LAZY LAWRENCE THE FALSE KEY SIMPLE SUSAN THE WHITE PIGEON THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT ETON MONTEM FORGIVE AND FORGET WASTE NOT, WANT NOT; OR, TWO STRINGS TO YOUR BOW OLD POZ THE MIMIC THE BARRING OUT; OR, PARTY SPIRIT THE BRACELETS THE LITTLE MERCHANTS TARLTON THE BASKET WOMAN

THE ORPHANS.
Near the ruins of the castle of Rossmore, in Ireland, is a small cabin, in which there once lived a widow and her four children. As long as she was able to work, she was very industrious, and was accounted the best spinner in the parish; but she overworked herself at last, and fell ill, so that she could not sit to her wheel as she used to do, and was obliged to give it up to her eldest daughter, Mary.
Mary was at this time about twelve years old. One evening she was sitting at the foot of her mother's bed spinning, and her little brothers and sisters were gathered round the fire eating their potatoes and milk for supper. "Bless them, the poor young creatures!" said the widow, who, as she lay on her bed, which she knew must be her deathbed, was thinking of what would become of her children after she was gone. Mary stopped her wheel, for she was afraid that the noise of it had wakened her mother, and would hinder her from going to sleep again.
"No need to stop the wheel, Mary, dear, for me," said her mother, "I was not asleep; nor is it THAT which keeps me from sleep. But don't overwork yourself, Mary."
"Oh, no fear of that," replied Mary; "I'm strong and hearty."
"So was I once," said her mother.
"And so you will be again, I hope," said Mary, "when the fine weather comes again."
"The fine weather will never come again to me," said her mother. "'Tis a folly, Mary, to hope for that; but what I hope is, that you'll find some friend--some help--orphans as you'll soon all of you be. And one thing comforts my heart, even as I AM lying here, that not a soul in the wide world I am leaving has to complain of me. Though poor I have lived honest, and I have brought you up to be the same, Mary; and I am sure the little ones will take after you; for you'll be good to them--as good to them as you can."
Here the children, who had finished eating their suppers, came round the bed, to listen to what their mother was saying. She was tired of speaking, for she was very weak; but she took their little hands, as they laid them on the bed and joining them all together, she said, "Bless you, dears; bless you; love and help one another all you can. Good night!-- good-bye!"
Mary took the children away to their bed, for she saw that their mother was too ill to say more; but Mary did not herself know how ill she was. Her mother never spoke rightly afterwards, but talked in a confused way about some debts, and one in particular, which she owed to a schoolmistress for Mary's schooling; and then she charged Mary to go and pay it, because she was not able to GO IN with it. At the end of the week she was dead and buried, and the orphans were left alone in their cabin.
The two youngest girls, Peggy and Nancy, were six and seven years old. Edmund was not yet nine, but he was a stout-grown, healthy boy, and well disposed to work. He had been used to bring home turf from the bog on his back, to lead cart-horses, and often to go on errands for gentlemen's families, who paid him a sixpence or a shilling, according to the distance which he went, so that Edmund, by some or other of these little employments, was, as he said, likely enough to earn his bread; and he told Mary to have a good heart, for that he should
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