The Farm and the Fireside or the Romance of Agriculture: Being Half Hour Sketches of Life in the Country (1852)

BELOVED HELPERS, –To-night how your hearts would have rejoiced to have seen me and my happy hundreds of little toiling children in our new schoolroom in the Refuge. How varied their feelings! One whispered, ‘It was here my mother died of the cholera.’ Another, ‘Oh! I was once in this ward before, so ill of black cholera.’ Dear children! our prayer was that it might still be a house of mercy to many a sin-wearied soul. We have never had such a large schoolroom before, nor the advantage of desks