cost.

By the close of 1856 she had drawn up a set of rules to be submitted to
the Committee. One of the most important of these was that a
Sub-Committee should be appointed, whose duty it was to select the blind
persons to be employed. She would not hear of giving votes to
subscribers and enabling them to force upon the institution worthless
and incompetent persons. Careful selection was essential to her scheme,
and was one of the chief causes of its early success.

Another matter which she deemed of importance was a stipulation that the
"present superintendent, William Hanks Levy, is to be continued in his
office until he shall withdraw, or be removed by the General Committee."

The rules recapitulate the object and set forth the work of the
Association. They were submitted to a general meeting of the
subscribers, held on the 19th December 1856.

The meeting having first resolved itself into the Association for
Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind, unanimously approved of the
rules, and adopted them as the laws of the Association. They are
interesting as the outcome of Bessie's endeavours to ameliorate the
condition of the blind, and are therefore given at the end of the
chapter.

A Committee was appointed on the 1st of January 1857, and in May of the
same year a report was issued, with a balance-sheet, showing
subscriptions and donations to the amount of L435, L75 of which had been
contributed by Bessie herself. Interesting tables were appended, giving
the age, address, cause of blindness, family, income, to what amount
employed by the institution, and nature of trade of all men working for
the Euston Road shop, together with similar lists of men and women
desiring employment, of applicants at the institution, and of members of
the circulating library.

The three months' report was a preliminary to a meeting held in Willis's
Rooms on the 26th of May 1857. The Bishop of London was in the chair,
the Bishop of Oxford spoke, and afterwards wrote to Mrs. Gilbert:

LAVINGTON HOUSE, PETWORTH, _30th May 1857_.

MY DEAR MRS. GILBERT--I must tell you with many thanks what
pleasure your kind letter gave me, and how glad I was to be able to
take part in _that_ meeting. I did not at all please myself in what
I said, _because_ I wanted to show in the instance of your own
daughter how God brought good out of such suffering; how the inward
character, intens