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.