uspend her
prison-work. But her decision had already been made. "I had counted the
cost," she said, "and my mind, was made up. If, whilst imparting
truth to others, I became exposed to temporal want, the privations so
momentary to an individual would not admit of comparison with following
the Lord, in thus administering to others." She now devoted six or seven
hours every day to the prisoners, converting what would otherwise have
been a scene of dissolute idleness into a hive of orderly industry.
Newly-admitted prisoners were sometimes refractory, but her persistent
gentleness eventually won their respect and co-operation. Men old in
years and crime, pert London pickpockets, depraved boys and dissolute
sailors, profligate women, smugglers, poachers, and the promiscuous
horde of criminals which usually fill the gaol of a seaport and county
town, all submitted to the benign influence of this good woman; and
under her eyes they might be seen, for the first time in their lives,
striving to hold a pen, or to master the characters in a penny primer.
She entered into their confidences--watched, wept, prayed, and felt
for all by turns. She strengthened their good resolutions, cheered the
hopeless and despairing, and endeavoured to put all, and hold all, in
the right road of amendment.

For more than twenty years this good and truehearted woman pursued her
noble course, with little encouragement, and not much help; almost
her only means of subsistence consisting in an annual income of ten or
twelve pounds left by her grandmother, eked out by her little earnings
at dressmaking. During the last two years of her ministrations, the
borough magistrates of Yarmouth, knowing that her self-imposed labours
saved them the expense of a schoolmaster and chaplain [14which they had
become bound by law to appoint], made a proposal to her of an annual
salary of 12L. a year; but they did it in so indelicate a manner as
greatly to wound her sensitive feelings. She shrank from becoming the
salaried official of the corporation, and bartering for money those
serviced which had throughout been labours of love. But the Gaol
Committee coarsely informed her, "that if they permitted her to visit
the prison she must submit to their terms, or be excluded." For
two years, therefore, she received the salary of 12L. a year--the
acknowledgment of the Yarmouth corporation for her services as gaol
chaplain and schoolmistress! She was now, however, becoming old a