Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/105

Rh good, and zealous, and with a fair knowledge of Scripture. This was all that could be hoped for in a village school-mistress, and as she spoke warmly of her halfsister, who was at service some miles off, the two, Patience Seward and Flower Waite, were engaged as mistresses of a girls'-school in the old vicarage for Rowborrow and Shipham, and readily imbibed instruction in the Misses Mores' system and manner of teaching. Two men were also found to teach the boys.

Congresbury was next taken in hand. Of this, apparently, Hannah writes: "This hot weather makes me suffer terribly; yet I have now and then a good day, and on Sunday was enabled to open the school. It was an affecting sight. Several of the grown-up youths had been tried at the last assizes; three were the children of a person lately condemned to be hanged, many thieves, all ignorant, profane, and vicious beyond belief. Of this banditti we have enlisted one hundred and seventy; and when the clergyman, a hard man, who is also the magistrate, saw these creatures kneeling round us, whom he had seldom seen but to commit or punish in some way, he burst into tears. I can do them little good, I fear, but the grace of God can do all. . . . Have you never found your mind, when it has been weak, now and then touched and raised by some little incident? Some musical gentlemen, drawn from a distance by