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 No person in Yarmouth took thought for these poor, miserable prisoners; no human eye looked with pity on their dreadful condition; and had their reformation been proposed, it would, no doubt have been scouted as an impossibility.

In August, 1819, a woman was committed to the jail for a most unnatural crime. She was a mother who had "forgotten her sucking child." She had not "had compassion upon the son of her womb," but had cruelly beaten and ill-used it. The consideration of her offence was calculated to produce a great effect upon a female mind; and there was one person in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth who was deeply moved by it. Sarah Martin was a little woman of gentle, quiet manners, possessing no beauty of person, nor, as it seemed, any peculiar endowment of mind. She was then just eight-and-twenty years of age, and had. for thirteen years past, earned her livelihood by going out to the houses of various families in the town as a day-labourer in her business of dress-making. Her residence was at Caister, a village three miles from Yarmouth, where she lived with an aged grandmother, and whence she walked to Yarmouth and back again in the prosecution of her daily toil. This poor girl had long mourned over the condition of the inmates of the jail. Even as long back as in 1810, "whilst frequently passing the jail," she says, "I felt a strong desire to obtain admission to the prisoners to read the scriptures to them; for I thought much of their condition, and of their sin before God; how they were shut out from society, whose rights they had violated, and how destitute they were of the scriptural instruction which alone could meet their unhappy circumstances." The case of the unnatural mother stimulated her to make the attempt, but "I did not," she says, "make known my purpose of seeking admission to the jail until the object was attained, even to my beloved grandmother; so sensitive was my fear lest any obstacle should thereby arise in my way, and the project seem a visionary one. God led me, and I consulted none but Him." She ascertained the culprit's name, and went to the jail. She passed into the dark porch which overhung the entrance, fit emblem of the state of things within; and no doubt with bounding heart, and in a timid modest tone of application, uttered with that clear and gentle voice, the sweet tones of which are yet well remembered, solicited permission to see the cruel parent. There was some difficulty—there is always "a lion in the way" of doing good—and she was not at first permitted to enter. To a wavering mind, such a check would have appeared of evil omen; but Sarah Martin was too well assured of her own purposes and powers to hesitate. Upon a second application she was admitted.

The manner of her reception in the jail is told by herself with admirable simplicity. The unnatural mother stood before her. She "was surprised at the sight of a stranger." "When I told her," says Sarah Martin, "the motive of my visit, her guilt, her need of God's mercy, she burst into tears, and thanked me!"

Her reception at once proved the necessity for such a missionary, and her own personal fitness for the task; and her visit was repeated again and again, during such short intervals of leisure as she could spare from her daily labours. At first she contented herself with merely reading to the prisoners; but familiarity with their wants and with her own powers soon enlarged the sphere of her tuition.