CHAPTER XVI.
In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient of
Frances Evans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinion
of her character. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkable
degree of at least two good points, viz., perseverance and a
sense of duty; I found she was really capable of applying to
study, of contending with difficulties. At first I offered her
the same help which I had always found it necessary to confer on
the others; I began with unloosing for her each knotty point, but
I soon discovered that such help was regarded by my new pupil as
degrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proud impatience.
Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solve
alone any perplexities they might present. She set to the task
with serious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour,
eagerly demanded more. So much for her perseverance; as to her
sense of duty, it evinced itself thus: she liked to learn, but
hated to teach; her progress as a pupil depended upon herself,
and I saw that on herself she could calculate with certainty; her
success as a teacher rested partly, perhaps chiefly, upon the
will of others; it cost her a most painful effort to enter into
conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour to bend it into
subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in general the
action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as
unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and
to it she could at any time subject her inclination, if that
inclination went counter to her convictions of right; yet when
called upon to wrestle with the propensities, the habits, the
faults of others, of children especially, who are deaf to reason,
and, for the most part, insensate to persuasion, her will
sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the sense of duty,
and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful expense
of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances
toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere
her conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like
docility on their part, because they saw that they had power over
her, inasmuch as by resisting her painful attempts to convince,
persuade, control--by forcing her to the employment of coercive
measures--they could inflict upon her exquisite suffering.
Human beings--human children especially--seldom deny themselves
the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of
possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to
make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are duller than
those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and his
bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over
that instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly,
because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know
neither how to sympathize nor how to spare. Frances, I fear,
suffered much; a continual weight seemed to oppress her spirits;
I have said she did not live in the house, and whether in her own
abode, wherever that might be, she wore the same preoccupied,
unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved air that always shaded her
features under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter, I could not tell.
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