The Bracelets (Amiability and Industry Rewarded) / Maria Edgeworth

In a beautiful and retired part of England lived Mrs. Villars, a

lady whose accurate understanding, benevolent heart, and steady

temper, peculiarly fitted her for the most difficult, as well as most

important of all occupations--the education of youth. This task she had

undertaken; and twenty young persons were put under her care, with the

perfect confidence of their parents. No young people could be happier;

they were good and gay, emulous, but not envious of each other; for Mrs.

Villars was impartially just. Her praise they felt to be the reward of

merit, and her blame they knew to be the necessary consequence of ill

conduct; to the one, therefore, they patiently submitted, and in the

other consciously rejoiced. They rose with fresh cheerfulness in the

morning, eager to pursue their various occupations; they returned in the

evening with renewed ardour to their amusements, and retired to rest

satisfied with themselves and pleased with each other.

Murad the Unlucky / Maria Edgeworth

CHAPTER I

It is well known that the grand seignior amuses himself by going at

night, in disguise, through streets of Constantinople; as the caliph

Haroun Alraschid used formerly to do in Bagdad.

The Limerick Gloves / Maria Edgeworth

CHAPTER I

It was Sunday morning, and a fine day in autumn; the bells of Hereford

Cathedral rang, and all the world, smartly dressed, were flocking to

church.

"Mrs. Hill! Mrs. Hill!--Phoebe! Phoebe! There's the cathedral bell, I

say, and neither of you ready for church, and I a verger," cried Mr.

Hill, the tanner, as he stood at the bottom of his own staircase. "I'm

ready, papa," replied Phoebe; and down she came, looking so clean, so

fresh, and so gay, that her stern father's brows unbent, and he could

only say to her, as she was drawing on a new pair of gloves, "Child, you

ought to have had those gloves on before this time of day."

Madame de Fleury / Maria Edgeworth

CHAPTER I

"There oft are heard the notes of infant woe,

The short thick sob, loud scream, and shriller squall--

How can you, mothers, vex your infants so?"--POPE

"D'abord, madame, c'est impossible!--Madame ne descendra pas ici?" said

Francois, the footman of Madame de Fleury, with a half expostulatory,

half indignant look, as he let down the step of her carriage at the

entrance of a dirty passage, that led to one of the most

miserable-looking houses in Paris.

Thoughts On Bores / Maria Edgeworth

A bore is a biped, but not always unplumed. There be of both kinds;--the female frequently plumed, the male-military plumed, helmed, or crested, and whisker-faced, hairy, Dandy bore, ditto, ditto, ditto.--There are bores unplumed, capped, or hatted, curled or uncurled, bearded and beardless.

Letters of Julia and Caroline / Maria Edgeworth

No penance can absolve their guilty fame, Nor tears, that wash out guilt, can wash out shame.--PRIOR.

LETTER I.

JULIA TO CAROLINE.

In vain, dear Caroline, you urge me to think; I profess only to feel.

"Reflect upon my own feelings! Analyze my notions of happiness! explain to you my system!"--My system! But I have no system: that is the very difference between us. My notions of happiness cannot be resolved into simple, fixed principles. Nor dare I even attempt to analyze them; the subtle essence would escape in the process: just punishment to the alchymist in morality!

Letter From A Gentleman to His Friend / Maria Edgeworth

Upon the BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER;WITH THE ANSWER.

I congratulate you, my dear sir, upon the birth of your daughter; and I wish that some of the fairies of ancient times were at hand to endow the damsel with health, wealth, wit, and beauty. Wit?--I should make a long pause before I accepted of this gift for a daughter--you would make none.

Leonora / Maria Edgeworth

LETTER I.

Lady Olivia to Lady Leonora L----.

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman! In vain, dear Leonora, would you reconcile me to my doom. Condemned to incessant hypocrisy, or everlasting misery, woman is the slave or the outcast of society. Confidence in our fellow-creatures, or in ourselves, alike forbidden us, to what purpose have we understandings, which we may not use? hearts, which we may not trust? To our unhappy sex, genius and sensibility are the most treacherous gifts of heaven. Why should we cultivate talents merely to gratify the caprice of tyrants? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison. Forgive me if on this subject I cannot speak--if I cannot think--with patience. Is it not fabled, that the gods, to punish some refractory mortal of the male kind, doomed his soul to inhabit upon earth a female form? A punishment more degrading, or more difficult to endure, could scarcely be devised by cruelty omnipotent. What dangers, what sorrows, what persecutions, what nameless evils await the woman who dares to rise above the prejudices of her sex!

Almeria / Maria Edgeworth

John Hodgkinson was an eminent and wealthy Yorkshire grazier, who had no children of his own, but who had brought up in his family Almeria Turnbull, the daughter of his wife by a former husband, a Mr. Turnbull. Mr. Turnbull had also been a grazier, but had not been successful in the management of his affairs, therefore he could not leave his daughter any fortune; and at the death of her mother, she became entirely dependent on her father-in-law. Old Hodgkinson was a whimsical man, who, except in eating and drinking, had no inclination to spend any part of the fortune he had made; but, enjoying the consequence which money confers, endeavoured to increase this importance by keeping all his acquaintance in uncertainty, as to what he called his "testamentary dispositions." Sometimes he hinted that his step-daughter should be a match for the proudest riband in England; sometimes he declared, that he did not know of what use money could be to a woman, except to make her a prey to a fortune-hunter, and that his girl should not be left in a way to be duped.