1 8 4 7.] 



THE DISTRESS, 



.101 



in the town. She has freely spent her money, time, incessant 

 labour, — cooking, doctoring, visiting, comforting, teaching — 

 doing everything. I think it a great mercy that we were sent 

 here when we were ; for we have not only been useful our- 

 selves, but have been able to stir up others. We have had 

 a day school for the unemployed boys and men, and an 

 industrial school for females, and both (especially the latter) 

 have been of essential service. We are now beginning a night 

 school, and in three weeks got a hundred scholars, two-thirds 

 of them men. I have stirred up their minds with lectures on 

 the Christianity of Warrington, the drinking customs of W., 

 the sanitary condition of W., and various outdoor temperance 

 lectures. All have excited great attention. W T e have a Work- 

 ing Men's Sanitary Association : they go visiting two and two, 

 and make reports of the town ; we have nearly concluded 

 a quarter of it. I am secretary. We have got a Juvenile 

 Temperance Society in our school, and have meetings on 

 Sunday evenings, and a Juvenile Peace Society. All this 

 time I have had excellent health. We bathe every morning, 

 wet and fine — have done for three months — set out at half- 

 past five ; and I am learning to swim. You can't think what 

 an intense delight it is to me, and how much good it has done 

 me, physically and morally." 



As he has stated in this letter, he spoke the word in season 

 from his pulpit. On February 21, he entered in his record 

 that he preached extempore in the morning (a rare occurrence), 

 " The true fast ; " adding, " Brought a sermon of my father's ; 

 but so impressed by what I had seen in my visiting, and by a 

 miserable Irish beggar-woman, who came in and crossed to 

 the altar and knelt on the stones, that I gave an extempore 

 address on our duties in reference to the distress." A month 

 later, he preached on "Waste of fragments," which was so 

 very plain in its illustrations, that his sister scarcely thought it 

 " Sunday reading." * She, however, acted on its principle, and 

 devoted herself to the preparation of nutritious food for the 



* In his father's school library, some books were lettered S. R., as being 

 suitable for reading on Sundays. 



