A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Character and Tastes 79
companions were making, sometimes for themselves, and sometimes
for the poor. There still remains a curious specimen of her
needlework made for a sister-in-law, my mother. In a very small
bag is deposited a little rolled up housewife,° furnished with minikin
needles and fine thread. In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and
in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with
a crow quill, are these lines:––
This little bag, I hope, will prove
To be not vainly made;
For should you thread and needles want,
It will afford you aid.
And, as we are about to part,
’T will serve another end:
For, when you look upon this bag,
You’ll recollect your friend.
It is the kind of article that some benevolent fairy might be supposed
to give as a reward to a diligent little girl. The whole is of
flowered silk, and having been never used and carefully preserved,
it is as fresh and bright as when it was first made seventy
years ago; and shows that the same hand which painted so exquisitely
with the pen could work as delicately with the needle.
I have collected some of the bright qualities which shone, as it
were, on the surface of Jane Austen’s character, and attracted
most notice; but underneath them there lay the strong foundations
of sound sense and judgment, rectitude of principle, and
delicacy of feeling, qualifying her equally to advise, assist, or
amuse. She was, in fact, as ready to comfort the unhappy, or to
nurse the sick, as she was to laugh and jest with the light-hearted.
Two of her nieces were grown up, and one of them was married,°
before she was taken away from them. As their minds became
more matured, they were admitted into closer intimacy with her,
and learned more of her graver thoughts; they know what a sympathising
friend and judicious adviser they found her to be in
many little difficulties and doubts of early womanhood.
I do not venture to speak of her religious principles:° that is a
subject on which she herself was more inclined to think and act