XXIV.

BUSY IDLENESS.

MRS. DAWSON being obliged to leave home for six weeks, her daughters, Charlotte and Caroline, received permission to employ the time of her absence as they pleased; that is, she did not require of them the usual strict attention to particular hours, and particular studies, but allowed them to choose their own employments; only recommending them to make a good use of the license, and apprizing them, that, on her return, she should require an exact account of the manner in which the interval had been employed.

The carriage that conveyed their mother away was scarcely out of hearing, when Charlotte, delighted with her freedom, hastened up stairs, to the school room, where she looked around on books, globes, maps, drawings, to select some new employment for the morning. Long before she had decided upon any, her sister had quietly seated herself at her accustomed station, thinking that she could do nothing better than finish the French exercise she had begun the day before. Charlotte, however, declined attending to French that day, and, after much indecision, and saying, "I have a great mind to"-three several times without finishing the sentence, she at last took

down a volume of Cowper, and read in different parts for about half an hour; then throwing it aside, she said she had a great mind to put the book shelves in order-a business which she commenced with great spirit; but in the course of her laudable undertaking, she met with a manuscript in short-hand: whereupon she exclaimed to her sister, Caroline, don't you remember that old Mr. Henderson once promised he would teach us short-hand?-How much I should like to learn! -Only mamma thought we had not time;-but now, this would be such a good opportunity.-I am sure I could learn it well in six weeks; and how convenient it would be! One could take down sermons, or any thing, and I could make Rachel learn, and then how very pleasant it would be to write to each other in short-hand! Indeed, it would be convenient in a hundred ways." So saying, she ran up stairs, without any further delay, and putting on her hat and spencer, set off to old Mr. Henderson's.

Mr. Henderson happened to be at dinner; nevertheless Charlotte obtained admittance on the plea of urgent business; but she entered his apartment so much out of breath, and in such apparent agitation, that the old gentleman rising hastily from table, and looking anxiously at her over his spectacles, inquired in a tremulous tone, what was the matter. When, therefore, Charlotte explained her business, he appeared a

little disconcerted; but having gently reproved her for her undue eagerness, he composedly resumed his knife and fork, though his hand shook much more than usual during the remainder of his meal. However, being very good-natured, as soon as he had dined, he cheerfully gave Charlotte her first lesson in short-hand, promising to repeat it regularly every morning.

Charlotte returned home in high glee: she at this juncture considered short-hand as one of the most useful, and decidedly the most interesting of acquirements; and she continued to exercise herself in it all the rest of the day. She was exceedingly pleased at being able already to write two or three words which neither her sister nor even her father could decipher. For three successive mornings Charlotte punctually kept her appointment with Mr. Henderson; but on the fourth, she sent a shabby excuse to her kind master; and, if the truth must be told, he from that time saw no more of his scholar. Now the cause of this desertion was two-fold: first, and principally, her zeal for short-hand, which for the last eight and forty hours had been sensibly declining in its temperature, was on the above morning, within half a degree of freezing point; and besides this, a new and far more arduous and important undertaking had by this time suggested itself to her mind. Like many young persons of desultory inclinations, Charlotte often amused herself

with writing verses; and it now occurred to her, that an abridged history of England in verse, was still a desideratum in literature. She commenced this task with her usual diligence; but was somewhat discouraged in the outset by the difficulty of finding a rhyme to Saxon, whom, she indulged the unpatriotic wish, that the Danes had laid a tax on. But though she got over this obstacle by a new construction of the line, she found these difficulties occur so continually, that she soon felt a more thorough disgust at this employment than at the preceding one; so the epic stopped short, some hundred years before the Norman conquest. Difficulty, which quickens the ardor of industry, always damps, and generally extinguishes the false zeal of caprice and versatility.

Charlotte's next undertaking was, to be sure, a rapid descent from the last in the scale of dignity. She now thought, that by working very hard during the remainder of the time, she should be able to accomplish a patch-work counterpane, large enough for her own little tent bed; and the case of this employment formed a most agreeable contrast in her mind with the extreme difficulty of the last. Accordingly, as if commissioned with a search-warrant, she ransacked all her mother's drawers, bags, and bundles in quest of new pieces; and these spoils proving very insufficient, she set off to tax all her friends, and to tease all the linen-drapers in the town for their odds and

ends; urging that she wanted some particularly. As she was posting along the street on this business, she espied at a distance a person whom she had no wish to encounter, namely, old Mr. Henderson. To avoid the meeting she crossed over; but this manœuvre did not succeed: for no sooner had they come opposite to each other, than, to her great confusion, he called out all across the street, in his loud and tremulous voice, and shaking his stick at her, "How d'ye do Miss Shorthand? I thought how it would be! O fie! O fie!

Charlotte hurried on: and her thoughts soon returned to the idea of the splendid radiating star which she designed for the centre-piece of her counterpane. While she was arranging the different patterns, and forming the alterations of light and shade, her interest continued nearly unabated; but when she came to the practical part, of sewing piece to piece with unvarying sameness, it began, as usual, to flag. She sighed several times, and cast many disconsolate looks at the endless hexagons and octagons, before she indulged any distinct idea of relinquishing her task: at length, however, it did forcibly occur to her, that, after all she was not obliged to go on with it; and that really, patch-work was a thing that was better done by degrees, when one happens to want a job, than to be finished all at once. So with this thought (which would have been a very good one if it had occurred in proper time) she suddenly