Miss Pillbody's school was unknown to the pages of the City Directory. It was never advertised in the newspapers, with a long list of "Hons." and bank presidents as unimpeachable references. The bright little plate on her door exhibited only "Pillbody," in neat script, and no hint of the existence of a school within. The school was select to such an extent, that not more than a dozen pupils were admitted to its privileges; and so private, that, outside of that number, its name was not known except among its graduates; and there were reasons why they should hesitate to spread its reputation abroad. If strictly classified among the institutions of the city, it might be termed, "A school for female adults in good circumstances, whose early education had been neglected."
The idea of this school originated with Miss Pillbody; and, like many other valuable ideas, it was hit upon quite accidentally.
Dorcas Pillbody was the only daughter of a man who had amassed a fortune in the oyster business, and had finally retired to a four-story house in Sixteenth street, near the Sixth Avenue, where he purposed to spend the balance of his days in the dignified enjoyment of his hard-earned money. To this secluded oyster dealer, as solitary and happy in the midst of his new grandeur as a bivalve in its native bed, came a plausible stockbroker, who, after a series of interviews, persuaded Mr. Pillbody to make a small investment in the "Sky Blue Ridge Pure Vein Copper Mining Company."
The small investment unfortunately turned out well. In less than sixty days, the shares that he had bought at ten per cent, sold at seventy-five, and ultimately advanced to par. Delighted with this unexpected result, Mr. Pillbody determined to stake largely (he had been a wholesale oyster dealer, and was a man of comprehensive ideas). Again his venture prospered. Mr. Pillbody, intoxicated with success, invested his entire means in the purchase of two new mines in a Southern State, whose unparalleled richness was certified to by mineralogists of great reputation.
Just as Mr. Pillbody was making arrangements to bring these mines before the public, his stockbroking friend, through whom he had effected the purchase, left for Europe, and it was then discovered that Mr. Pillbody's mines, if they existed at all, were ten feet under a swamp, on property which belonged to somebody else, the title deeds of which had been forged by the adroit operator. Mr. Pillbody could not endure his misfortune. He wrote notes bidding farewell to his wife and child, and commending them to the care of their relatives, to whom he had always been bountifully generous. Then he went to Staten Island by ferry, there took a row boat, proceeded to a celebrated oyster bed which was the scene of his youthful labors, and drowned himself.
The widow and daughter (the latter twenty years of age, healthy, and finely educated) applied to the two brothers of the deceased for assistance, and were at once kindly received into their families, and sat upon sofas and ate from tables purchased with money (never repaid) of the late Mr. Pillbody. The two brothers, upon application to the proper tribunal, were appointed executors of the estate, and were not long in discovering that it was insolvent. Mother and daughter were shifted about with almost monthly regularity from one house to the other; and, though they tried to make themselves useful in every capacity except that of a servant, they could not disguise the conviction that their departure was an event a great deal more welcome than their coming. The widow's talent for dressmaking (she had been a milliner's apprentice before marriage), though of a high order, and exerted to the utmost, failed to please. Miss Pillbody's thorough knowledge of French, and the higher branches of an elegant education, as well as her proficiency on the piano, and her sweet, simple style of ballad singing, were worse than useless acquirements in her uncles' families.
Her uncles were cold, stern, ignorant men, who had an intense hatred for the mere accomplishments of life. Each had two daughters, who, with the natural tastes of the sex, were not averse to the graces of education, in the abstract, but could not bear to see them displayed by their "stuck-up, pauper cousin," as they often termed that hapless young lady in private conversation. A kind offer, which she was imprudent enough, to make, to teach them all she knew, had set them against her from the first.
The widow endured the cold looks and cutting words of her husband's relatives, and even the reproaches which they heaped upon his folly, with a widow's patience, and seemed content to remain a poor, broken-down, dependent creature. Miss Pillbody, on the contrary, was quick to discern and to resent, mentally, the uncivil treatment daily experienced by her mother and herself. Had she been alone in the world, she would have left those inhospitable roofs when the unkind hints first began to be dropped, and trusted to the cold charity of strangers; but she could not bear the thought of being separated from her mother. So she endured her wretched state of dependence as best she could, while she quietly sought for some means of employment that would yield them a living.
Profiting by the lessons she had learned from her uncles, she did not apply to any person who had known her father and received favors from him in their better days. She asked no favor from any one--only work, at a fair price. By diligent hunting, she found several opportunities. She could earn four dollars a week by embroidering (at which she was skilful, and had taken premiums); or two dollars and a half for teaching French, twice a week, in a country seminary; or her board and washing for inducting a family of four little musical prodigies into all the mysteries of the piano. But these tempting offers would still have left her mother with her uncles, and she spurned them all.