Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.

And so the contract was sealed, and so she was rescued from the pit of destruction into which she was rapidly sinking.

And this it was that had excited such impassioned, such lasting, such devoted feelings of gratitude to Him who rules the course of this world, in a heart which had only to be shown what was good to embrace it.

Fisher was all he had said; extremely poor. His salary, as assistant, was handsome, nevertheless. He received one hundred a year and his board from the gentleman with whom he was; but his dress, which was necessarily rather expensive, and his mother, who had only an annuity of twelve pounds a year, consumed it all. Still you see he was by no means actually starving; and he thought the young wife he was going to bring home would be no very great addition to his expenses, and he trusted, if children came, that he should, by his exertions, be able to provide for them. In two years his engagement with the present gentleman as his assistant would be at an end; and he had received from the old man, who was a sort of humorist in his way, several very strong hints about partnership, if he would be satisfied with a reasonable share. Partnership would, in the course of time, he knew, become sole proprietorship, at the death or retirement of his aged patron – one of which events could not be very far distant.

It was, therefore, with great satisfaction, after having summoned the necessary attendance, and sent his young betrothed to rest, that Fisher walked home on a fine fresh morning.

It was true he had taken a step most people would call very imprudent, thus to encumber himself with a young wife at the very outset of his career; certainly, he had never intended any such thing. He had always resolved to be patient, and have a little store of money by him, before he persuaded any one to begin the world with him. He could not bear the idea of all being dependent upon his own life, and risking the chance of leaving a widow and a young family destitute. But this was an exceptional case, for he could not, without trembling, contemplate the dangers which surrounded this young and innocent girl. His medical knowledge taught him but too well the perils to the health of one so fresh and blooming, from labors in close rooms to which she was so little accustomed – death stared her in the face, unless she escaped it by means at which he shuddered to think.

The only way in which he, young as he was, could possibly help her, was to withdraw her from the dangerous scene and make her his wife; and on that step he had been for some days resolving. The emotion she had shown, the timorous joy, the sweet confidence in his love and honor, had given a rapturous feeling of happiness to him quite new. He had intended benevolently and kindly; he had met with all the blessings of sincere attachment.

Instead of walking to Mrs. Stedman's to take some rest, which he very much needed, he went to his mother's house, or rather the house where he had taken a snug little apartment for his mother.

It lay somewhere out Brompton way; in which district neat rows of small houses are to be found looking backward upon pleasant greens and gardens. There he had found a modest little suite of apartments; one sitting-room and two bedrooms – a room for his mother and another sometimes occupied by himself.

The little hut, a tiny place it was, was clean to the greatest nicety, and though fitted up in the very simplest and cheapest manner, had an air of perfect comfort. The walls were stained green, the drugget upon the floor was pink and fawn; the chairs were covered with what used to be called Manchester stripe – very clean and pleasant-looking, and excellent for wash and wear. There was a pretty little table for tea and dinner, and a nice, round three-clawed one close by the mother's side – who was established in the only article of luxury in the room, a very comfortable arm-chair. There the old lady passed her life.

She had lost the use of her lower limbs for some years; but her health of body and mind in other respects was sound. The only thing for which the son had as yet coveted a little more money, had been that he might possess the means to give his mother the enjoyment of exercise and air; and when he passed young men, the very pictures of health and strength, lounging idly in their carriages, as one sometimes does in the Park, though not given to such nonsense, he could not help uttering a secret exclamation against the inequalities of fortune, and thinking the blindness of the goddess of the wheel no fable.

They were but passing thoughts these, such as the best have when they languish for the means of bestowing good.

Such indulgences, however, were rarely to be thought of, though now and then he managed to obtain them; but as the best compensation he could make, he paid a few guineas a year more for this pretty apartment, of which the back room, elongated into a little bow-window, formed the sitting-room – what would have been the front sitting-room being divided into the two bedrooms. This pleasant bow-window looked over a row of gardens belonging to the neighboring houses, and these to a considerable tract of nursery-ground filled with rows of fruit trees, and all the cheerful pleasant objects to be seen in such places. In summer the arm-chair was wheeled to the window, and the whole of the view was disclosed to the old lady; in winter it returned to the fire; but even there she did not lose her pretty view altogether, the room was so little that from her place she might easily command it. Miss Martineau, in a book of hers, has given us a most valuable and interesting account of the way in which, during a tedious and most trying illness, her active spirit confined to one place, she used to amuse herself, and while away the time by looking out of her window through her telescope and watching all that was going on. This old lady did much the same, minus the good telescope, which she had not. Her son, however, had presented her with an old-fashioned opera-glass, which he had picked up at some second-hand retailer or other, and as it was a good one, and, moreover, very light to the hand, it did as well for her and better.

In some things the old lady had a little resemblance to Miss Martineau. She had the same cheerful activity of mind, the same readiness of adapting herself to circumstances – things in a great measure constitutional. She was, moreover, a very shrewd, sensible woman, and deeply pious – pious in the most excellent way: really, vitally, seriously. She came of a good old puritan stock, where piety had been cherished from generation to generation. Some physiologists say, that even the acquired moral qualities and habits descend to the succeeding generation. It is possible an aptness for good or evil may be, and often is, inherited from those who have gone before. It would seem to have been so in this case. The pious father and mother, children of as pious parents, had left this pious daughter – and her excellencies had descended in accumulated measure to her son. This old lay had been sorely tried – death and poverty had done their worst – except in as far as the cruel ravager had spared her this one boy, one of many children, all followed the delicate, consumptive man who had been their father. She had borne it all. Strong in faith, she had surrendered her treasures to the Lord of Life, in trust that they should be found again when he maketh up his jewels. Cheerful as was her temper, life's course had been too rough with her, for her to value it very much, when those lovely, promising buds, but half disclosed, were one after the other gathered. But she had escaped that racking agony of the loving, but too faithless mother – when all the sweets of nature in its abundance flow around her, and they are not there to enjoy.

"When suns shine bright o'er heaven's blue vault serene,
Birds sing in trees, and sweet flowers deck the plain,
Weep I for thee, who in the cold, cold grave
Sleep, and all nature's harmony is vain.
But when dark clouds and threat'ning storms arise,
And doubt and fear my trembling soul invade;
My heart one comfort owns, thou art not here,
Safe slumbering, in the earth's kind bosom laid."

She was happier far than the author of these lines.

She looked upward; she almost saw those she had lost, the objects of a glorious resurrection – already living in the ineffable presence of the God whom they had so faithfully endeavored to serve.

I need not tell you, after this, that her spirits were subdued to a holy calmness and composure.

Her life had been one of the most active endeavors after usefulness. The good she had managed to do can scarcely be calculated. Grains of sand they might be, these hoarded minutes, but it was golden sand; the heap accumulated was large and precious, at the end of sixty-five years.

What money she had possessed she had expended courageously in giving a professional education to her son. Her little annuity of twelve pounds a year was all she had saved for herself. Upon that she believed with her own exertions, she could manage to exist till her son was able to support both; but she had been struck down earlier than she calculated upon. She had at this time lost the use of her lower limbs altogether, and was visited with such trembling in her hands, that she was obliged to close the task abruptly, and to sit down dependent upon her son before she had expected it.

It had been very trying work till he obtained his present situation, and he still felt very poor, because he was resolved every year to lay twenty pounds or so by, that, in case any thing should happen to him, his mother might have some little addition to her means provided. He was rather strangely provident for the case of his own death; so young man as he was; perhaps he felt the faltering spring of life within, which he had inherited from his father.

Three years the mother and son had thus lived together, and Fisher was master of sixty pounds.

He had never allowed himself to cast a thought upon marriage, though of a temper ardently to desire, and rapturously to enjoy, domestic felicity. He said to himself he must first provide for his mother's independence, and then think about his own happiness. But the accident which had brought him and Lucy together had produced other thoughts – thoughts which he had, but the very day before the nursing so suddenly closed, communicated to his mother, and she had said,

"I think you are quite right, John. Imprudent marriages are, in most cases, very wrong things – a mere tempting of Providence: and, that no blessing follows such tempting, we know from the best authority: but this is a most pious, benevolent, and very rational attempt to save a fellow-creature upon the brink of destruction, and I think it would be a want of faith, as well as a want of common humanity, in either of us to hesitate; I am very glad she seems such a sweet, innocent, pretty creature, for your sake, my darling John; I hope she will bring a blessing into your dwelling and repay you for your goodness to me; I am sorry she must come and live with your old mother, for young wives don't like that – but I promise you I will do my very best to be as amiable as an old woman can; and, moreover, I will neither be cross nor disappointed if she is not always as amiable as a young woman ought to be. Will that do? Yes, yes; fetch her away from that sink of iniquity, and we'll all get along somehow or other, never fear."

And so Lucy Miles, blushing like a rose, and, as her young and delighted husband thought, more beauteous than an angel of light, was in a few weeks married to John Fisher, and she went home to the old lady.

"Amid the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth, and there you learnt
From years of quiet industry to love
The living beings of your own fire-side."

The eloquent tongue of Fisher had over and over again related with deep feeling the history of all he owed to his mother, and Lucy, far from feeling inclined to be jealous of the devoted affection he felt for her, like a good loving girl as she was, extended the ardent attachment she felt toward her husband to every thing that belonged to him.

She had lost her own parents, whom she had loved exceedingly, though they were quite ordinary people. She soon almost worshiped old Mrs. Fisher.

Lucy had been little improved by those who had the rearing of her; she was a girl of excellent dispositions, but her education had been commonplace. In the society of the old lady her good gifts, both of head and heart, expanded rapidly. The passionate desire she felt to render herself worthy of her husband, whom she adored almost as some superior being, made her an apt and docile pupil.

A few years 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, if it had not been for the promptings of this excellent man.

His medical skill made him thoroughly aware of the injurious effect produced upon the health by the ill-regulated system of such establishments; and his thoughts, as he sat resigned to helplessness in his arm-chair, were seriously directed to that subject.

In consequence of his suggestions it was that Mrs. Fisher began her life of business upon a plan of her own, to which she steadily adhered. At first she found considerable difficulty in carrying it out – there are always numerous obstructions to be met with in establishing any improvements; but where the object is rational and benevolent, perseverance and a determined will triumph over every difficulty.

The first thing Fisher insisted upon was ventilation; the second, warmth; the third, plenty of good, wholesome, and palatable food; the fourth, exercise. He determined upon a house being selected which was not closely built up behind, and that the room in which the young ladies worked should be large and commodious in proportion to the inmates. A portion of the little money he had saved was sacrificed to the additional expense thus incurred. He looked upon it, he told his wife, as given to charity, for which she must expect no return, and for which he should look for no interest. A good wide grate, which should be well supplied with a cheerful fire in winter, was to assist the ventilation proceeding from a scientific plan of his own, which kept the room constantly supplied with a change of air; and under the table at which the girls sat at work, there was in winter a sort of long, square, wooden pipe filled with hot water and covered with carpeting, upon which they could put their feet: the extreme coldness of the feet arising from want of circulation, being one of the causes to which Fisher attributed many of the maladies incident to this mode of life.

The next object of attention was the table. Fisher had been at school, at one or two different schools, resembling each other in one thing only – the scandalous – I must use the strong and offensive word – the scandalous neglect or worse than neglect – the infamous and base calculations upon the subject of food which pervaded the system of those schools, and which pervaded, I am sorry to say, so many of the schools with which he had chanced to be acquainted. In the course of his practice as a medical man, his opportunities for observation had been above the common.

In fine ladies' schools, I can not assert that the shameful economy of buying inferior provisions, and the shameful indifference as to how they were cooked, which prevail in so many boys' schools, were to be found – but a fault almost equally great prevailed too generally. There was not enough. These growing girls, stimulated to most unnatural exertions both of body and mind, peculiarly unnatural to growing girls who require so much care, fresh air, exercise, and rest, for their due development – these young things had very rarely nearly so much to eat as they could have eaten.

Sometimes enough was literally not set before them; at others, a sort of fashion in the school to consider a good appetite as a proof of coarseness, greediness, and vulgarity, worked but too effectually upon these sensitive creatures. A girl at that age would rather be starved than ridiculed or sneered at for eating.

But in boys' schools – expensive boys' schools too – where six times as much was paid for a boy's board as would have boarded him – either through scandalous parsimony, or the most inexcusable negligence, he had seen meat brought into the house not fit to eat; cheap and bad in itself, but rendered doubly unwholesome in summer by the most utter carelessness as to whether it was fresh. Boys are hardy things, and it is right they should not be accustomed to be too nice; but wholesome, plain roast and boiled is what they pay for and ought to have; and the defrauding them of what is so necessary to health, vigor, and even intellect, in this unprincipled manner, is almost the very worst form of robbery any man can be guilty of.

Fisher was resolved it should not be so in his wife's house. He and his wife had agreed that the young ladies she employed should be lodged and boarded under her roof, unless they had respectable parents who could and would be fully answerable for them; and they should have a plentiful and a pleasant table – that he was resolved upon. As he was competent to little else, he took this matter upon himself. He calculated what ought fairly to be laid out, and he laid it all out. He would not economize a penny. If he was able to make a good bargain with his butcher, the young ladies, not he, should have the benefit of it all. They should have a bit of fish, or a little poultry, or a little good fruit, poor girls, to vary a meal, to which they could not bring the sturdy appetite of much out-of-door exercise.

Then came the great chapter of that exercise. There was the difficulty – how much time could Mrs. Fisher possibly afford to lose? – to abandon to this object? – for the work must pay– or it could not continue to be done. But the difficulty diminished upon examination. Time may be counted by strength as well as by minutes. The same thing may, by two different hands, be accomplished in most unequal portions of time.

The dreadful feeling of weariness, which, as Lucy, she so well remembered – one consequence of sitting so long in an unchanged position, and at the same employment – that dreadful feeling could not be forgotten by her. Her horror at the recollection was so strong, that of this matter she thought more than even her benevolent husband.

He recollected to have heard that the Jesuits, those masters of human development, physical as well as intellectual, never suffered a pupil to be employed more than two hours upon the same thing without a change – to get up and turn round the chair – to pace five minutes up and down the room would in many cases suffice. Mr. Fisher laid down his plan.

Two hours the young ladies worked, and then for ten minutes they were allowed to lay down their needles; they might walk about the room, into the passage, up and down stairs, or sit still and lounge. That precious, useful lounge, so fatally denied to the wearied spine of many a growing girl, was here permitted. They might look about them, or close their eyes and be stupefied; in short, do just what they liked.

It was soon found by experience that the work done after this refreshing pause more than made up for the time thus expended.