er. One of their Sunday
amusements was to play at Sunday school, and Bessie was invariably made
the mistress.

For a long time she and her sister Fanny, little more than a year
younger, were companions in their lessons, which were in every respect
alike. Bessie's were read aloud to her; she learnt easily, her memory
was good, and she made rapid progress. In French and German the grammar
was read to her, and she worked the exercises verbally. The governess,
Miss Lander, was devoted to her pupils, and specially interested in
Bessie, so that she turned to account every hint and suggestion as to
special methods for the blind. She drew threads across a piece of paper,
which was fixed to a frame, and taught the child to write in the
ordinary way. There was a box of raised letters which could be used for
spelling lessons, and there was leaden type with raised figures for
arithmetic lessons. The letters were arranged on an ordinary board; but
the figures were placed in a grooved board. Now arithmetic was the most
difficult and distasteful of all Bessie's lessons; the placing of the
figures correctly was a very perplexing task, and the working of sums an
intricate problem. But she did her duty and made her way steadily to
compound division, a stage beyond which no woman was expected to advance
fifty years ago. Miss Lander did her best to explain the various
processes, but the sums, alas, were only too often wrong, and a
passionate outburst would succeed the announcement of failure. That
little episode of the chair was probably not unconnected with
arithmetic. She was keenly interested in astronomical lessons, and the
home-made orrery, which explained the relative position of sun, moon,
and planets, was a source of unfailing interest. The little fingers
fluttered over the planets and followed their movements with great
delight.

An eager, intelligent child, with parents and teachers all anxious to
smoothe her way and remove difficulties, we need not wonder that youth
was a happy time for her: "the brightest and happiest of all the
children," she is said to have been.

"The Principal's Lodgings," as the old-fashioned, rambling house in
High Street, Oxford, was called, has no garden whatever. The front door
opens into a dark hall; spacious cupboards to the right; to the left the
dining-room; in front of you passages, doors, and two difficult
staircases. There was no one, we are told, who had not fallen up or down
these dark win