thanking me in the warmest terms
for my care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys;
the house is a scene of happiness; I, only, am sad at heart--This
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master
with gratitude for the care of his boyish years--this young man--in
the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, never
could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He was proud, when
I praised; he was submissive, when I reproved him; but he did never
_love_ me--and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me,
is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting
the scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on equal
terms the man they were accustomed to look up to with reverence.
My wife too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say, "my
once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster.--When I married
her--knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy
notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the
loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still,
was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged
sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from
fatiguing herself to death--I expressed my fears, that I was bringing
her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me
tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties
of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What
wonders will not woman's love perform?--My house is managed with a
propriety and decorum, unknown in other schools; my boys are well
fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all this
performed with a careful economy, that never descends to meanness. But
I have lost my gentle, _helpless_ Anna!--When we sit down to enjoy an
hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen
to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments
through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her
heart and her features are changed by the duties of her situation. To
the boys, she never appears other than the _master's wife_, and she
looks up to me as the _boys' master_; to whom all show of love and
affection would be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her
situation and mine. Yet _this_ my gratitude forbids me to hint to
her. For my sake she submitted to be this alter