w back in disgust from the offer to teach them a
trade and make them self-supporting. They were often even more degraded
and vicious than poor.

To see and know this, and yet not to lose heart, to "hold fast to that
which is good" when evil abounds, is a difficult task. Bessie did not
shrink from it, and she did not misunderstand her work. She was merciful
and compassionate to those who had fallen, felt for them in the
solitude, the poverty, the despair that had driven them to evil courses,
would relieve them in actual want, but she soon learnt that nothing
could be done with or for them in the workroom. They might be reached,
and indeed must be reached by other agencies, but the _teacher_ could do
nothing.

The practical outcome of this experience was extreme care in selecting
the persons to be taught and employed, and a very tender compassion in
reference even to the hopeless and abandoned. Their lonely, sad
condition was never overlooked.

Bessie was very cautious in the selection of members of the Committee
who would henceforth govern the Institution, and a letter written about
this time on her Foucault frame to an old Oxford friend will be read
with interest. She not only wrote many of her own letters at this time,
but addressed her own envelopes, and very puzzling the postman must
have sometimes found them.

PALACE, CHICHESTER, _16th January 1857_.

MY DEAR MRS. B.--I hope you will not think this letter very
troublesome, but I know not in what other way I can gain the
information I wish than by troubling you with these lines. I
remember you have heard of my undertaking for employing blind
workmen. I have now formed an Association under the title of "The
Association for promoting the general welfare of the Blind," in
order to extend its usefulness, and to place it upon a more
permanent footing than it could have had when in the hands of one
individual. Now my object in writing to you is to ask whether Mr.
A., who is, I believe, a clergyman at C., knows or could find out
anything about a Mr. D., living, I believe, at C. He is a very
large fur dealer, very rich; he is blind, and I am anxious to have
him on the Committee of the Association, but must know more about
him before this can be done. He has a warehouse in the city, I
think, in Cannon Street or Cannon Street West. I want all the
information I