"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.