The Mischief of the Mistletoe

Bath

“ ‘So Emma,’ said he, ‘you are quite the stranger at home. It must seem odd enough for you to be here. A pretty piece of work your Aunt Turner has made of it! By heaven!.. What a blow it must have been upon you! To find yourself, instead of heiress of eight or nine thousand pounds, sent back a weight upon your family, without a sixpence... After keeping you from your family for such a length of time as must do away all natural affection... you are returned upon their hands without a sixpence.’ ”

— Jane Austen, The Watsons

“ ‘Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.’

‘I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school,’ said her sister.”

— Jane Austen, The Watsons