14 THE WORLD'S WORKERS. 



The occupation of sewing, however, had not de- 

 stroyed the passion for knowledge, and little by little 

 Mary overcame the obstacles which stood in the way 

 of her becoming possessed of it. All her friends and 

 acquaintance disapproved of her devotion to study, 

 but they could not stop her career. She commenced 

 a course of history unaided ; she made the most of 

 the little French she had learnt at school, and prac- 

 tised French translation ; and she attempted to 

 teach herself Latin. She even persuaded her mother 

 to allow the village schoolmaster to teach her the use 

 of the terrestrial and celestial globes. The last-named 

 study was specially to her taste. On starlight nights 

 she would sit for hours at her bedroom window, gazing 

 at that starlit sky whose wonders it was to be the 

 work of her life to explain to others. 



Music, too, possessed great charms for Mary Fair- 

 fax, and in the early part of her life she gave a good 

 deal of time to it. When she was about thirteen, an 

 uncle, coming over from India, made her a present of 

 a piano, and the presentation of the gift led to her 

 taking music lessons. Indeed, for a considerable 

 period she used to practise four or five hours a day, 

 and rose early in order that she might do so. At 

 first, she tells us, she had a bad habit of thumping the 

 piano, and so breaking the strings. This was awk- 

 ward, especially as there was no piano-tuner in the 

 village where she lived, and she had to learn to mend 

 the broken strings and tune the instrument herself. 



