How happy you will be, when the little ones are older, when you get beyond the merely physical part of their education. I am sure your children will all be beautiful, good and wise, for they come into the world finely organized and are watched and trained under your gentle and elevating influence.
I heartily rejoice that the baby is a girl; you will give her strength to endure and struggle with the evils which are the birthright of her sex. She will add to the number of well educated women, who, I am afraid form but a very small portion of humanity. But I forget the difference in age. This little baby belongs almost to the third generation. She will be in her bloom, when we shall be old women, if not dead. Great changes may take place before she attains womanhood.
MRS. HILL to her little daughter GERTRUDE.
81, St. Mark’s Place, Leeds. September 1st, 1843.
Ockey can now read quite well, and spends a great deal of time every day in reading to herself. Do you know she can scarcely walk, she goes leaping as if she were a little kangaroo—that is because she is such a merry little girl.
Ockey speaks to everything that is said to her and corrects or makes fun of any mistake. She is always ready for a joke. To-day her Papa said, “Take care or you will have a downfall.” “That I should not mind,” said Ockey, “if the down was there when I fell,” and then she laughed.
Ockey learns to read very nicely. She is a very funny little girl; this is the way she talks. “Mama, I am as hot as if I were on the fire.” “Mama, I shall never button this shoe if I were to try till the world is knocked down.” She says things are as ugly as coal. The other day she told Minnie that she should “like to have a field so large that she could run about in it for ever.”
This letter shows her early love of colour, especially red.
We have a box full of silks. I gave Miranda a beautiful piece, it was velvet and the colours were black, purple, yellow and white and green. Miranda gave me a beautiful piece of crimson plush. Miranda has a book called The Peacock at Home and it has three stories in it.
On Monday it is Ockey’s birthday. She will be seven years old. She intends to give me a patchwork bag on that day—and she sits on a play box placed on a window-board, and looks so pretty, sewing earnestly away, never thinking that I am watching her. Every now and then she looks out at the passers by: they know every boy and girl, cat, dog, and donkey in the village by sight, and a good many of them by name, and for those whose name they do not know they invent one.