Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/111

Rh be heard. At this moment every heart seemed softened and subdued, and many eyes shed tears.

"Seven or eight thousand people attended, and behaved as quietly as the sheep that grazed around us. Thus did this day open to us much matter for reflection. Farmers and their wives mixed with their own poor and rode in the same conveyances, their own waggons. The clergy headed this ragged procession with hats in their hands. Seven thousand people showed us they could be quiet on a day of merriment, not to say innocent. Upwards of nine hundred children were well fed as a reward for a year's labour, and that labour learning the Bible. The meeting took its rise from religious institutions. The day passed in the exercise of duties, and closed with joy. Nothing of a gay nature was introduced, but loyalty to the king, and this never interfered with higher duties to the King of Kings. The examinations were in the repetition of the Bible, Catechism, and Psalms, when the children received prizes according to their proficiency. Either then, or at the annual school feasts, brides of good character were presented with a Bible, a pair of stockings, and five shillings, almost a fortune, when a spinning-wheel cost four-and-six pence."

The repudiation of anything gayer than the National Anthem strikes us as strange, but the time had not yet come when the people could safely be taught to