In returning home, she called, agreeably to her promise, on Mrs. Cameron, who was as much pleased with the result of her visit as herself.
"See, my dear Miss Willoughby," said she, "how your conduct was rewarded, as I was sure it would be, for adhering to the right. Had you sent Nancy for the work, perhaps you would never have got it, and your qualification as a teacher might never been known. Was there not my dear Helen, a special providence here? yes indeed there was."
Here, I must beg to digress a little, to urge the advantage of a thorough education; which can never be too highly appreciated, or too strongly enforced. Under any reverse of fortune, who can calculate on the benefits? to say nothing of the gratification it affords in so many ways. "Knowledge is power," and always secures its possessor, a degree of influence, that wealth can never command. Oh! would that all mothers, as well as daughters, could but be duly impressed, with a sense of its _vital_ importance. Then we should not see girls, day after day, permitted on any frivolous excuse, to absent themselves from school: for if time be so truly valuable, as we know it really is; how doubly, nay trebly, is it, in the period devoted to education. If we could only rightly reflect, on the true end of education, this serious waste could never be. What is it I ask? is it merely to acquire a certain amount of rudimental information, and perhaps a superficial acquaintance with showy accomplishments? assuredly not: it is to learn how to think rightly, that we may by thinking rightly, know how to act so. Rudimental instruction is necessarily the foundation; and as such, must be duly and _fully_ appreciated; but it is the _application_ of knowledge that education is meant to teach, and this must be acquired by "line upon line and precept upon precept; here a little and there a little," it is not the work of a day; nor is it to be gained by alternate periods at school. Who know but those who teach, half the time that is required to recover what is lost in these frequently recurring, temporary absences. It is not only a large portion of rudimental instruction that is lost; but those _many_ opportunities, which every conscientious teacher eagerly, and anxiously, avails herself of, to enforce good principles. This can be done at no stated periods, but they must be seized as circumstances call them forth, whether suggested by the teachings of the sacred writings, or from the ample pages of history: or even from the lesson she may convey from the sentiment that often heads a child's simple copy book. If these, lost and frittered away periods, be of no account, then there is both time and money thrown away by those who are regular in their scholastic attendance.