he
writes a friend, "that so great a trial was to meet my return from
England till the whole force of the contrast was laid before me.... I
may be too craving of that rich gift, the power of sharing with other
minds. I have drunk deeply, long, and Oh, how blissfully, at this
fountain in a foreign clime. Hearts met hearts, minds joined with
minds, and what were the secondary trials of pain to the enfeebled
body when daily was administered the soul's medicine and food."
Surely, that English experience was one upon which not every invalid
from these shores could count, but when, a few years later, Miss Dix
returned to England as a kind of angel of mercy, giving back much
more than she had ever received, the Rathbone family must have been
glad that they had befriended her in her obscurity and her need.

It was in 1841 at the age of thirty-nine that the second chapter in
the life of Miss Dix began. Note that she had as little thought that
she was beginning a great career as any one of us that he will date
all his future from something he has done or experienced to-day. It
happened that Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, so long the beloved pastor of the
Unitarian parish in Saco, Maine, was then a student of Divinity at
Cambridge. He had engaged to assist in a Sunday School in the East
Cambridge jail, and all the women, twenty in number, had been assigned
to him. The experience of one session with his class was enough to
convince him that a young man was very much out of place in that
position and that a woman, sensible if possible, but a woman
certainly, was necessary. His mother advised him to consult Miss Dix.
Not that her health would permit her to take the class, but she could
advise. On hearing Mr. Nichols' statement, Miss Dix deliberated a
moment and then said, "I will take the class myself." Mr. Nichols
protested that this was not to be thought of, in the condition of her
health, but we have heard of her iron will: "Fixed as fate we
considered her," said one of her pupils; and she answered Mr. Nichols,
"I shall be there next Sunday."

This was the beginning. "After the school was over," says Dr. Nichols,
"Miss Dix went into the jail and found among the prisoners a few
insane persons with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no
stove in their rooms and no means of proper warmth." The date was the
twenty-eighth of March and the climate was New England, from which
Miss Dix had so often had to flee. "The jailer said that a fi