nning to tell
upon her, and she had urgent need of rest.

She was mainly responsible for the funds necessary to carry on the
business. Being familiar with every detail of the business, she was
called upon to explain its intricacies to her Committee. She had often
to justify and secure the carrying out of arrangements which did not
meet with general approval. Every scheme, proposal, experiment, rested
ultimately upon her; upon this one blind lady, whose health had never
been good, but whose strenuous energy and strong sense of duty forbade
her to say no to any appeal on behalf of fellow-sufferers.

Museum, boarding-house, sick fund, musicians' association, with its
classes for vocal and instrumental music, endowment fund, fund for
establishing a West-end shop, fund in aid of tradesmen who had lost
their sight; all these are the outcome of a single year's work. There
are also letters innumerable to be written and answered, appeals to be
made, applications to be replied to. She threw herself with fervid zeal
into all her work, and a day was accounted lost if she had not
accomplished in it something for the Association.

Two sisters were married in 1858, but the diary contains no other record
of such important events than "unavoidably nothing done." Her heart
beat warm and true as ever, home and friends were dear as ever, but for
a time her horizon was bounded by the narrow walls of one small dark
house in the Euston Road.

Herr Hirzel, director of the blind institution at Lausanne, who had
visited the Association during the summer, was so well pleased with all
he saw that he decided on his return to Switzerland to open workshops
for the blind. At different times some six institutions had also applied
for teachers or blind superintendents, but no workmen had been trained
or were qualified to fill such posts. Bessie saw that this was an
omission in her scheme, and at once resolved that special facilities for
the training of intelligent blind men ought to be provided.

In the autumn, however, the long threatened reaction from overwork set
in, and she was prostrated by weakness and depression. In November she
was induced to try the effect of complete rest, and paid a long promised
visit to Miss Isabella Law, at Northrepps Rectory, near Cromer.

She took with her a Foucault frame and taught Miss Law to use it, and
what further employment she found during her short holiday is best told
in Miss Law's letters.

Writing at