some time on the Green. I intend taking a
little cheap lodging, and living without a servant; and the few
scholars I have will maintain me. I have done with all worldly
pursuits and wishes; I only desire to submit without being
dependent on the caprice of our fellow-creatures. I shall have many
solitary hours, but I have not much to hope for in life, and so it
would be absurd to give way to fear. Besides, I try to look on the
best side, and not to despond. While I am trying to do my duty in
that station in which Providence has placed me, I shall enjoy some
tranquil moments, and the pleasures I have the greatest relish for
are not entirely out of my reach.... I have been trying to muster
up my fortitude, and laboring for patience to bear my many trials.
Surely, when I could determine to survive Fanny, I can endure
poverty and all the lesser ills of life. I dreaded, oh! how I
dreaded this time, and now it is arrived I am calmer than I
expected to be. I have been very unwell; my constitution is much
impaired; the prison walls are decaying, and the prisoner will ere
long get free.... Remember that I am your truly affectionate friend
and sister,

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

Perhaps the uncertainty of keeping her pupils, or the double work
necessitated by this project, discouraged her. At all events, it was
relinquished when other and seemingly better proposals were made to her.
Some of her friends at Newington Green recommended her to the notice of
Mr. Prior, then Assistant Master at Eton, and his wife. Through them she
was offered the situation of governess to the children of Lord
Kingsborough, an Irish nobleman. If she accepted it, she would be spared
the anxiety which a school of her own had heretofore brought her. The
salary would be forty pounds a year, out of which she calculated she
could pay her debts and then assist Mrs. Bishop. But she would lose her
independence, and would expose herself to the indifference or contempt
then the portion of governesses. "I should be shut out from society," she
explained to George Blood, "and be debarred the pleasures of imperfect
friendship, as I should on every side be surrounded by unequals. To live
only on terms of civility and common benevolence, without any interchange
of little acts of kindness and tenderness, would be to me extremely
irksome." The prospect, it must be admitted, was no