ars thus spent, and you would scarcely have known her again. Her
piety was deep, and had become a habit--a part of her very soul; her
understanding naturally excellent, had been developed and strengthened;
the most earnest desire to perform her part well--to do good and extend
virtue and happiness, and to sweeten the lives of all with whom she had
to do, had succeeded to thoughtless good nature, and a sort of
instinctive kindness. Anxiety for her husband's health, which constantly
oppressed her, a sort of trembling fear that she should be bereaved
early of this transcendent, being; this it was, perhaps, which enhanced
the earnest, serious tone of one so young.

She was extremely industrious, in the hope of adding to her husband's
means of rest and recreation, and the accidental acquaintance with a
French _modiste_, who had fallen ill in London, was in great distress,
and whom Fisher attended through charity, had put her into the way of
improving herself in this art more than she could have done even in that
eminent school, the work-room of Miss Lavington. The French-woman was a
very amiable, and pious person, too. She was a French Protestant; the
connection ripened into friendship, and it ended by placing Mrs. Fisher
in the state of life in which we find her. Fisher fell desperately ill
in consequence of a fever brought on at a dissection, from which he
narrowly escaped with life; the fever left him helpless and incapable of
exertion. The poor mother was by this time dead; he succeeded to the
vacant arm-chair. Then his wife resolved upon doing that openly which
she had till now done covertly, merely working for the bazaars. She
persuaded her husband, when a return to his profession appeared
hopeless, to let her employ his savings in setting up business with
Madame Noel, and from small beginnings had reached that high place in
her profession which she now occupied.

* * * * *

No sooner had Mrs. Fisher established a working-room of her own, and
engaged several young women to labor under her superintendence, than the
attention of her husband was seriously turned to the subject of those
evils from which he had rescued his wife.

She had suffered much, and experienced several of the evils consequent
upon the manner such places were managed; but she would probably not
have reflected upon the causes of these evils, nor interested herself so
deeply as she afterward did in applying the remedies