Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/184

172 Moreover, two Persian nobles who were studying in England visited Barley Wood. Much should we like to know what their real impressions of the place could have been, and of the two beautiful and dignified old ladies, so unlike their experience in their own country. Visitors constantly came, and the financial affairs and general supervision of the schools still rested on the sisters, and each had many days of sharp illness; but, when in tolerable health and free from interruption, Hannah contrived to write five hours daily, and in the morning. "It is a great loss to me," she says, "that I can make no use of the latter part of the day except by knitting, which is, perhaps, the portion best employed."

Both sisters were very seriously ill in 1818, the attack coming on with shivering fits, and pains as if the flesh were cut with knives. "My whole life," wrote Hannah, "from early youth has been a successive scene of visitation and restoration. I think I could enumerate twenty mortal diseases from which I have been raised up without sensible diminution of strength."

Depression of spirits never seems to have tried this happy sisterhood, nor did the power of being interested and amused ever fail them, and this no doubt greatly contributed to these recoveries. The summer of 1819 was spent quietly, except for a meeting of the Bible Society, when one hundred and twenty gentry dined at Barley Wood, and two