CHAPTER XII.
MRS. FRY IN DOMESTIC AND RELIGIOUS LIFE.
Hitherto our little monograph has dealt mainly with Mrs. Fry’s public life and work. Possibly, however, the reader may now feel curious to know how she bore the strain of private responsibilities; how as a wife, mother, neighbour, and Christian, she performed the duties which usually fall to people in these positions. It does not appear that she was wanting in any of them.
As the wife of a city merchant, as the mistress, until reverses came, of a large household, as the mother of a numerous family of boys and girls, and as the plain Friend, and minister among Friends, she seems to have fulfilled the duties which devolved upon her, with quiet cheerful simplicity, persevering conscientiousness, and prayerful earnestness. She was much the same in sunshine and in shadow, in losses and in prosperity; her only anxiety was to do what was right. From the revelations of her journal we find that self-examination caused her frequently to put into the form of writing, the questions which harassed her soul. There can be no reasonable doubt that she was harassed as all over-
