Experience, the mother of caution, now taught Juliet explicitly to make known to her new chief, that she had no view to learn the art of mantua-making as a future trade, or employment; but simply desired to work at it in such details, as a general knowledge of the use of the needle might make serviceable and expeditious: no premium, therefore, could be expected by the mistress; and the work-woman would be at liberty to continue, or to renounce her engagement, from day to day.

This agreement offered to her ideas something which seemed like an approach to the self-dependence, that she had so earnestly coveted: she entered, therefore, upon her new occupation with cheerfulness and alacrity, and with a diligence to which the hope, by being useful, to become necessary, gave no relaxation.

The business, by this scrupulous devotion to its interests, was forwarded with such industry and success, that she soon became the open and decided favourite of the mistress whom she served; and who repaid her exertions by the warmest praise, and proposed her as a pattern to the rest of the sewing sisterhood.

This approbation could not but cheer the toil of one whose mind, like that of Juliet, sought happiness, at this moment, only from upright and blameless conduct. She was mentally, also, relieved, by the local change of situation. She was now employed in a private apartment; and, though surrounded by still more fellow-work-women than at Miss Matson’s, she was no longer constrained to remain in an open shop, in opposition alike to her inclinations and her wishes of concealment; no longer startled by the continual entrance and exit of strangers; nor exposed to curious enquirers, or hardy starers; and no longer fatigued by the perpetual revision of goods. She worked in perfect quietness, undisturbed and uninterrupted; her mistress was civil, and gave her encouragement; her fellow-semptresses were unobservant, and left her to her own reflexions.

It is not, however, in courts alone that favour is perilous; in all circles, and all classes, from the most eminent to the most obscure, the ‘Favourite has no friend1!’ The praises and the comparisons, by which Mrs Hart hoped to stimulate her little community to emulation, excited only jealousy, envy, and ill will; and a week had not elapsed, in this new and short tranquillity, before Juliet found that her superiour diligence was regarded, by her needle-sisterhood, as a mean artifice ‘to set herself off to advantage at their cost.’ Sneers and hints to this effect followed every panegyric of Mrs Hart; and robbed approbation of its pleasure, though they could not of its value.

Chagrined by a consequence so unpleasant, to an industry that demanded fortitude, not discouragement; Juliet now felt the excess of her activity relax; and soon experienced a desire, if not a necessity, to steal some moments from application, for retirement and for herself.

Here, again, she found the mischief to which ignorance of life had laid her open. The unremitting diligence with which she had begun her new office, had advanced her work with a rapidity, that made the smallest relaxation cause a sensible difference in its progress: and Mrs Hart, from first looking disappointed, asked next, whether nothing more were done? and then observed, how much quicker business had gone on the first week. In vain Juliet still executed more than all around her; the comparison was never made there, where it might have been to her advantage; all reference was to her own setting out; and she was soon taught to forgive the displeasure which, so inadvertently, she had excited, when she saw the claims to which she had made herself liable, by an incautious eagerness of zeal to reward, as well as earn, the maintenance which she owed to Mrs Hart.

Alas, she thought, with what upright intentions may we be injudicious! I have thrown away the power of obliging, by too precipitate an eagerness to oblige! I retain merely that of avoiding to displease, by my most indefatigable application! All I can perform seems but a duty, and of course; all I leave undone, seems idleness and neglect. Yet what is the labour that never requires respite? What the mind, that never demands a few poor unshackled instants to itself?

From this time, the little pleasure which she had been able to create for herself, from the virtue of her exertions, was at an end: to toil beyond her fellow-labourers, was but to provoke ill will; to allow herself any repose, was but to excite disapprobation. Hopeless, therefore, either way, she gave, with diligence, her allotted time to her occupation, but no more: all that remained, she solaced, by devoting to her pen and Gabriella, with whom her correspondence,—her sole consolation,—was unremitting.

This unaffected conduct had its customary effect; it destroyed at once the too hardly earned favour of Mrs Hart, and the illiberal, yet too natural enmity of her apprentices; and, in the course of a very few days, Juliet was neither more esteemed, nor more censured, than any of her sisters of the sewing tribe.

With the energy, however, of her original wishes and efforts, died all that could reconcile her to this sort of life. The hope of pleasing, which alone could soften its hardships, thus forcibly set aside, left nothing in its place, but calmness without contentment; dulness without serenity.

Experience is not more exclusively the guide of our judgment, than comparison is the mistress of our feelings. Juliet now also found that, local publicity excepted, there was nothing to prefer in her new to her former situation; and something to like less. The employment itself was by no means equally agreeable for its disciples. The taste and fancy, requisite for the elegance and variety of the light work which she had quitted; however ineffectual to afford pleasure when called forth by necessity, rendered it, at least, less irksome, than the wearying sameness of perpetual basting, running, and hemming. Her fellow-labourers, though less pert and less obtrusive than those which she had left, had the same spirit f............