more than you have done, I don't know what I shall
do. You do not go to rest until midnight and then you rise very
early." The physician had administered too strong a tonic for the
little patient's health.

A lady who, at the age of sixteen, attended this school in 1833,
writes of her eminent teacher as follows: "She fascinated me from the
first, as she had done many of my class before me. Next to my mother,
I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was in the
prime of her years, tall and of dignified carriage, head finely shaped
and set, with an abundance of soft, wavy, brown hair." The school
continued in the full tide of success for five years, during which
time, by hard labor and close economies, Miss Dix had saved enough to
secure her "the independence of a modest competence." This seems a
great achievement, but if one spends nothing for superfluities and
does most of his labor himself, he can lay by his income, much or
little. The appointments of the school are said to have been very
simple, a long table serving as a desk for study, when it was not in
use for dinner. Only one assistant is mentioned, who gave instruction
in French and, perhaps, elementary Latin. Surely Miss Dix could handle
the rest herself. The merit of the school was not in its elaborate
appointments, but in the personal supervision of its accomplished
mistress. So the miracle was wrought and at the age of thirty-three,
Miss Dix had achieved a modest competence.

The undertaking had cost her her health once before, and now it cost
her her health again. The old symptoms, a troublesome cough, pain in
the side, and slight hemorrhages, returned and, having dragged her
frail body through the winter of 1836, Miss Dix reluctantly closed her
school in the spring and, in obedience to her physician, went to
Europe for rest, with the intention of spending the summer in England,
the autumn in France, and the winter in Italy. Prostrated by the
voyage, she was carried to a hotel in Liverpool where she was put to
bed with the forlorn prospect of being confined to her solitary room
for an indefinite period of convalescence. But again Dr. Channing
befriended her. From him she had received letters of introduction, one
of which brought to her side Mr. William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant
of Liverpool and a prominent English Unitarian. Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone
insisted upon taking her to their home, a charming residence a few
miles out of the city.