d by thoughts of unpaid bills and of increasing
debts. Poverty and creditors were the two unavoidable evils which stared
her in the face. Then, when she did hear from Fanny, it was to know that
the chances for her recovery were diminishing rather than increasing.
Reports of George Blood's ill-conduct, repeated for her benefit, hurt and
irritated her. On one occasion, her house was visited by men sent thither
in his pursuit by the girl who had vilely slandered him. Mrs. Campbell,
with the meanness of a small nature, reproached Mary for the
encouragement which she had given his vices. She loved him so truly that
this must have been gall and wormwood to her sensitive heart. Mr. and
Mrs. Blood continued poor and miserable, he drinking and idling, and she
faring as it must ever fare with the wives of such men. Mary saw nothing
before her but a dreary pilgrimage through the wide Valley of the Shadow
of Death, from which there seemed no escape to the Mount Zion beyond. If
she dragged herself out of the deep pit of mental despondency, it was to
fall into a still deeper one of physical prostration. The bleedings and
blisters ordered by her physician could help her but little. What she
needed to make her well was new pupils and honest boarders, and these the
most expert physician could not give her. Is it any wonder that she came
in time to hate Newington Green,--"the grave of all my comforts," she
called it,--to lose relish for life, and to feel cheered only by the
prospect of death? She had nothing to reproach herself with. In sorrow
and sickness alike she had toiled to the best of her abilities. That
which her hand had found to do, she had done with all her might. The
result of her labors and long-sufferance had hitherto been but misfortune
and failure. Truly could she have called out with the Lady of Sorrows in
the Lamentations: "Attend, all ye who pass by, and see if there be any
sorrow like unto mine." Because we know how great her misery was, we can
more fully appreciate the extent of her heroism. Though, as she confessed
to her friends in her weariest moments, her heart was broken, she never
once swerved from allegiance to the heaven-given mandate, as Carlyle
calls it, "Work thou in well-doing!" She never faltered in the
accomplishment of the duty she had set for herself, nor forgot the
troubles of others because of her own. Though her difficulties
accumulated with alarming rapidity, there was no relaxation in her
attention