edom and congenial companionship would give them. There was
nothing very Utopian in such a plan; but Fanny, when the time came for
its accomplishment, grew frightened. Her hard apprenticeship had given
her none of the self-confidence and reliance which belonged to Mary by
right of birth. Her family, despite their dependence upon her, seemed
like a protection against the outer world. And so she held back, pleading
the small chances of success by such a partnership, her own poor health,
which would make her a burden to them, and, in fact, so many good reasons
that the plan was abandoned. She, then, with greater aptitude for
suggestion than for action, proposed that Mary and Eliza should keep a
haberdashery shop, to be stocked at the expense of the much-called-upon
but sadly unsusceptible Edward. There is something grimly humorous in the
idea of Mary Wollstonecraft, destined as she was from all eternity to
sound an alarum call to arouse women from their lethargy, spending her
days behind a counter attending to their trifling temporal wants! A
Roland might as well have been asked to become cook, a Sir Galahad to
turn scullion. Honest work is never disgraceful in itself. Indeed,
"Better do to no end, than nothing!" But one regrets the pain and the
waste when circumstances force men and women capable of great work to
spend their energies in ordinary channels. A greater misery than
indifference to the amusement in which one seeks to take part, which
Hamerton counts as the most wearisome of all things, is positive dislike
for the work one is bound to do. Fortunately, Fanny's project was never
carried out. Probably Edward, as usual, failed to meet the proposals made
to him, and Mary realized that the chains by which she would thus bind
herself would be unendurable.

The plan finally adopted was that dearest to Mary's heart. She began her
career as teacher. She and Eliza went to Islington, where Fanny was then
living, and lodged in the same house with her. Then they announced their
intention of receiving day pupils. Mary was eminently fitted to teach.
Her sad experience had increased her natural sympathy and benevolence.
She now made her own troubles subservient to those of her
fellow-sufferers, and resolved that the welfare of others should be the
principal object of her life. Before the word had passed into moral
philosophy, she had become an altruist in its truest sense. The task of
teacher particularly attracted her because it