LETTER XVII.] 



ENGLISH EDUCATION. 



167 



ing and fitting emblem of the Saviour, for whom these pious 

 women have sacrificed friends, sympathy, and the social inter- 

 course and amenities which are within daily reach of our 

 workers at home. The large house, which is either plastered 

 stone or adobe, contains the dormitories, visitors' room, and 

 oratory, and three houses at the back, all densely shaded, are 

 used as schoolroom, cook-house, laundry, and refectory. There 

 is a playground under some fine tamarind trees, and an adobe 

 wall encloses, without secluding, the whole. The visitors' room 

 is about twelve feet by eight feet, veiy bare, with a deal table 

 and three chairs in it, but it was vacant, and I crossed to the 

 large, shady, airy schoolroom, where I found the senior sister 

 engaged in teaching, while the junior was busy in the cook- 

 house. These ladies in eight years have never left Lahaina. 

 Other people may think it necessary to leave its broiling heat, 

 and seek health and recreation on the mountains, but their work 

 has left them no leisure, and their zeal no desire, for a holiday. 

 A very solid, careful English education is given here, as well as 

 a thorough training in all housewifely arts, and in the more im- 

 portant matters of modest dress and deportment, and propriety 

 in language. There are thirty-seven boarders, native and half- 

 native, and mixed native and Chinese, between the ages of four 

 and eighteen. They provide their own clothes, beds, and 

 bedding, and I think pay forty dollars a year. The capitation 

 grant from Government for two years was 2325 dollars. Sister 

 Phosbe was my cicerone, and I owe her one of the pleasantest 

 days I have spent on the islands. The elder Sister is in 

 middle life, but though fragile-looking, has a pure com- 

 plexion and a lovely countenance; the younger is scarcely 

 middle-aged, one of the brightest, bonniest, sweetest-look- 

 ing women I ever saw, with fun dancing in her eyes and 

 round the corners of her mouth ; yet the regnant expression on 

 both faces was serenity, as though they had attained to " the 

 love which looketh kindly, and the wisdom which looketh 

 soberly on all things." 



I never saw such a mirthful-looking set of girls. Some were 

 cooking the dinner, some ironing, others reading English aloud ; 

 but each occupation seemed a pastime, and whenever they spoke 

 to the Sisters they clung about them as if they were their 

 mothers. I heard them read the Bible and an historical lesson, 

 as well as play on a piano and sing, and they wrote some very 

 difficult passages from dictation without any errors, and in a 

 flowing, legible handwriting that I am disposed to envy. Their 



