At noon, a decorous walk with Papa, who for their benefit
discourses on the General Depravity of Mankind in all Countries after
the Fall, occasionally pausing by the way to point for them some moral
of Nature. After a silent dinner, the little girls sew, under the
supervision of Mamma, or of the grown-up sister, or of both these
authorities, till the hour in which (if they have sewn well) they reap
permission to play (quietly) with their doll. A silent supper, after
which they work samplers. Another hymn to be learnt and repeated.
Evening prayers. Bedtime: `Good-night, dear Papa; good-night, dear
Mamma.'
Such, depend on it, is the Thompsons' curriculum. What a painful
sequence of pictures a genre-painter might have made of it! Let us be
thankful that we see the Thompsons only in this brief interlude of
their life, tearless and unpinafored, in this hour of strange
excitement, glorying in that Sunday-best which on Sundays is to them
but a symbol of intenser gloom.
But their very joy is in itself tragic. It reveals to us, in a flash,
the tragedy of their whole existence. That so much joy should result
from mere suspension of the usual re'gime, the sight of Lady Noble,
the anticipation of a nectarine! For us there is no comfort in the
knowledge that their present degree of joy is proportionate to their
usual degree of gloom, that for them the Law of Compensation drops
into the scale of these few moments an exact counter-weight of joy to
the misery accumulated in the scale of all their other moments.
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