impulsive nature. One day her friend Fanny Blood had repined at the
unhappy surroundings in the home she was maintaining for her father
and mother, and longed for a little home of her own to do her work
in. Her friend quietly found rooms, got furniture together, and
told her that her little home was ready; she had only to walk into
it. Then it seemed strange to Mary Wollstonecraft that Fanny Blood
was withheld by thoughts that had not been uppermost in the mood of
complaint. She thought her friend irresolute, where she had herself
been generously rash. Her end would have been happier had she been
helped, as many are, by that calm influence of home in which some
knowledge of the world passes from father and mother to son and
daughter, without visible teaching and preaching, in easiest
companionship of young and old from day to day.

The little payment for her pamphlet on the "Education of Daughters"
caused Mary Wollstonecraft to think more seriously of earning by her
pen. The pamphlet seems also to have advanced her credit as a
teacher. After giving up her day school, she spent some weeks at
Eton with the Rev. Mr. Prior, one of the masters there, who
recommended her as governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough,
an Irish viscount, eldest son of the Earl of Kingston. Her way of
teaching was by winning love, and she obtained the warm affection of
the eldest of her pupils, who became afterwards Countess Mount-
Cashel. In the summer of 1787, Lord Kingsborough's family,
including Mary Wollstonecraft, was at Bristol Hot-wells, before
going to the Continent. While there, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her
little tale published as "Mary, a Fiction," wherein there was much
based on the memory of her own friendship for Fanny Blood.

The publisher of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Thoughts on the Education of