As to the sweetness of labor and fulfilled claims; the interest of inward and outward activity; the impersonal delights of life as a perpetual discovery; the dues of courage, fortitude, industry, which it is mere baseness not to pay toward the common burden; the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation;--these, even if they had been eloquently preached to her, could have been no more than faintly apprehended doctrines: the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable observation that for a lady to become a governess--to "take a situation"--was to descend in life and to be treated at best with a compassionate patronage. 
As to the sweetness of labour, the interest of activity, the impersonal delights of life as a perpetual discovery, the dues of fortitude and industry, the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation;- these doctrines could have barely touched her: the only fact that mattered was that for a lady to become a governess was to descend in life. 