Henrietta Thompson

“ The philosopher eventually married an infatuated young lady, named Mills. Young, elegant, handsome, rich, and well-born, Esther Mills accepted proposals to which were affixed the following conditions:—All that the world calls pleasure, luxury, ostentation, were to be given up once and for ever; even society was to be limited to a chosen few, and after the absolute wants of existence were satisfied, the rest of their ample fortunes was to be devoted to the poor. Esther gladly, we are told, complied, and Thomas Day found at last a wife shaped on his own plan. ”

“ Day laid the lesson to his heart, and then set off to Paris to be modelled into a gentleman. He gave himself up to dancing and fencing masters. He stood for an hour or two a day in frames and back-boards; he screwed back his shoulders, though not inflicted with a Colonel Bentinck, to enforce the agony. He learned to point his toes, he assumed the military gait, he practised the fashionable bow, and came out in minuets and cotillons. He then hastened back to Lichfield and Elizabeth Sneyd, telling her that he was no longer Thomas Day, “blackguard,” but Thomas Day, “fine gentleman.” ”

“ But alas! the philosopher was spoiled, and the fine gentleman was a mere caricature, and Elizabeth, even Elizabeth, shrank back at his addresses. Three years afterwards, Honora married the young widower, Mr. Edgeworth, and, at her death, Elizabeth became her sister’s successor, and the third wife of that clever, desultory, garrulous man. So there closed Day’s hopes, as far as the lovely Sneyds were concerned. Meantime, Mr. Day had been carrying on his experiments on the hapless little Sabrina. ”

“ He chose, however, to carry out an experiment, and these were its details, these its localities.
Behold him, first, consulting with a Mr. Bicknell, a barrister in London, and his intimate friend; like himself, too, a man of taintless morals. Next we see the friends travelling down to Shrewsbury, and passing through the wards of the Foundling Hospital in that town. Two little girls, each twelve years old, are selected; one is fair—an Anglo-Saxon beauty—with flaxen hair and blue eyes. The little creature is christened “Lucretia.” ”

“ Scarcely of age, with a powerful form, a thoughtful and somewhat melancholy face, good features, though seamed with the small-pox, he might have attracted many a young belle, or, at any rate, her mother, to view his merits in a fair light. ”

“ Be this, however, as it may, she has painted admirably the impossibility of raising an uneducated and common mind to the standard of one improved by training, and gifted by nature. At all events the process must begin early, almost in infancy, besides which there is something in race. ”

“ She is forthwith styled “Sabrina.”
Certain written conditions satisfied the hospital committee; they were these:—Within a twelvemonth one of the children should be given into the protection of some respectable tradeswoman, bound apprentice, with a fee of one hundred pounds; on her marriage, if she behaved well, four hundred pounds were to be added to this modest dot. The girl who should be retained, was to be carefully educated, and, if Mr. Day should not marry her himself, she was to have five hundred pounds as her marriage portion. ”