spent
in an endeavour to obey our Maker and to correct our own defects in a
constant sense of our offences, and an earnest desire to avoid the
commission of them for the future, from a course of hurry and
dissipation which will not afford us leisure to recollect our errors,
nor attention to attempt amending them.'

'The difference is indeed striking,' said Lamont, 'and there can be no
doubt which is most eligible; but are you not too rigid in your censures
of dissipation? You seem to be inclined to forbid all innocent
pleasures.'

'By no means,' replied Miss Trentham, 'but things are not always
innocent because they are trifling. Can any thing be more innocent than
picking of straws, or playing at push-pin; but if a man employs himself
so continually in either that he neglects to serve a friend or to
inspect his affairs, does it not cease to be innocent? Should a
schoolboy be found whipping a top during school hours, would his master
forbear correction because it is an innocent amusement? And yet thus we
plead for things as trifling, tho' they obstruct the exercise of the
greatest duties in life. Whatever renders us forgetful of our Creator,
and of the purposes for which he called us into being, or leads us to be
inattentive to his commands, or neglectful in the performance of them,
becomes criminal, however innocent in its own nature. While we pursue
these things with a moderation which prevents such effects they are
always innocent and often desirable, the excess only is to be avoided.'

'I have nothing left me to say,' answered Lamont, 'than that your
doctrine must be true and your lives are happy; but may I without
impertinence observe that I should imagine your extensive charities
require an immense fortune.'

'Not so much, perhaps,' said Mrs Morgan, 'as you suppose. We keep a very
regular account, and at an average, for every year will not be exactly
the same, the total stands thus. The girls' school four hundred pounds a
year, the boys' a hundred and fifty, apprenticing some and equipping
others for service one hundred. The clothing of the girls in the house
forty. The almshouses two hundred. The maintenance of the monsters a
hundred and twenty. Fortunes and furniture for such young persons as
marry in this and the adjoining parishes, two hundred. All this together
amounts only to twelve hundred and ten pounds a year, and yet affords
all reasonable comforts. The expenses of ourselves and household, in our
ad