marry an Irish surgeon who
was settled there. After her marriage it was evident that she had but a
few months to live; Mary Wollstonecraft, deaf to all opposing counsel,
then left her school, and, with help of money from a friendly woman, she
went out to nurse her, and was by her when she died. Mary Wollstonecraft
remembered her loss ten years afterwards in these "Letters from Sweden
and Norway," when she wrote: "The grave has closed over a dear friend,
the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft
voice warbling as I stray over the heath."

Mary Wollstonecraft left Lisbon for England late in December, 1785. When
she came back she found Fanny's poor parents anxious to go back to
Ireland; and as she had been often told that she could earn by writing,
she wrote a pamphlet of 162 small pages--"Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters"--and got ten pounds for it. This she gave to her friend's
parents to enable them to go back to their kindred. In all she did there
is clear evidence of an ardent, generous, impulsive nature. One day her
friend Fanny Blood had repined at the unhappy surroundings in the home
she was maintaining for her father and mother, and longed for a little
home of her own to do her work in. Her friend quietly found rooms, got
furniture together, and told her that her little home was ready; she had
only to walk into it. Then it seemed strange to Mary Wollstonecraft that
Fanny Blood was withheld by thoughts that had not been uppermost in the
mood of complaint. She thought her friend irresolute, where she had
herself been generously rash. Her end would have been happier had she
been helped, as many are, by that calm influence of home in which some
knowledge of the world passes from father and mother to son and daughter,
without visible teaching and preaching, in easiest companionship of young
and old from day to day.

The little payment for her pamphlet on the "Education of Daughters"
caused Mary Wollstonecraft to think more seriously of earning by her pen.
The pamphlet seems also to have advanced her credit as a teacher. After
giving up her day school, she spent some weeks at Eton with the Rev. Mr.
Prior, one of the masters there, who recommended her as governess to the
daughters of Lord Kingsborough, an Irish viscount, eldest son of the Earl
of Kingston. Her way of teaching was by winning love, and she obtained
the warm affection of the eldest of her pupils, who became