Page:Elizabeth Fry (Pitman 1884).djvu/155

 for our sake. I look forward to your return with so much comfort, as useful and valuable helpers to me, which you will be all the more if you get forward yourselves. I see quite a field of useful service and enjoyment for you, should we be favoured to meet under comfortable circumstances in the spring. I mean that you should have a certain department to fill in the house, amongst the children and the poor, as well as your own studies and enjoyments; I think there was not often a brighter opening for two girls. Plashet is, after all, such a home, it now looks sweetly; and your little room is almost a temptation to me to take it for a sitting-room for myself, it is so pretty and so snug; it is newly furnished, and looks very pleasant indeed. The poor, and the school, will, I think, be glad to have you home, for help is wanted in these things. Indeed, if your hearts are but turned the right way, you may, I believe, be made instruments of much good, and I shall be glad to have the day come that I may introduce you into prisons and hospitals This appears to me to be your present business—to give all diligence to your present duties: and I cannot help believing, if this be the case, that the day will come when you will be brought into much usefulness.”

As the years rolled on, her boys went to school also; but they were followed by a loving mother’s counsels. From her correspondence with them we cull a few extracts to prove how constant and tender was her care over them, and how far-reaching her anxieties. Two or three specimens will suffice.

Upon the departure of each of her boys for boarding-school she wrote out and gave him a copy of the following rules. They are valuable, as showing how