r, giving it as seventy; while Mr.
Shepheard, the son-in-law, states it to have been only sixteen.

Mr. Wilson felt, most probably, that the responsibility of the whole plan
rested upon him. The payment made by the parents was barely enough for
food and lodging; the subscriptions did not flow very freely into an
untried scheme; and great economy was necessary in all the domestic
arrangements. He determined to enforce this by frequent personal
inspection; carried perhaps to an unnecessary extent, and leading
occasionally to a meddling with little matters, which had sometimes the
effect of producing irritation of feeling. Yet, although there was
economy in providing for the household, there does not appear to have
been any parsimony. The meat, flour, milk, &c., were contracted for, but
were of very fair quality; and the dietary, which has been shown to me in
manuscript, was neither bad nor unwholesome; nor, on the whole, was it
wanting in variety. Oatmeal porridge for breakfast; a piece of oat-cake
for those who required luncheon; baked and boiled beef, and mutton,
potato-pie, and plain homely puddings of different kinds for dinner. At
five o'clock, bread and milk for the younger ones; and one piece of bread
(this was the only time at which the food was limited) for the elder
pupils, who sat up till a later meal of the same description.

Mr. Wilson himself ordered in the food, and was anxious that it should be
of good quality. But the cook, who had much of his confidence, and
against whom for a long time no one durst utter a complaint, was
careless, dirty, and wasteful. To some children oatmeal porridge is
distasteful, and consequently unwholesome, even when properly made; at
Cowan Bridge School it was too often sent up, not merely burnt, but with
offensive fragments of other substances discoverable in it. The beef,
that should have been carefully salted before it was dressed, had often
become tainted from neglect; and girls, who were school-fellows with the
Brontes, during the reign of the cook of whom I am speaking, tell me that
the house seemed to be pervaded, morning, noon, and night, by the odour
of rancid fat that steamed out of the oven in which much of their food
was prepared. There was the same carelessness in making the puddings;
one of those ordered was rice boiled in water, and eaten with a sauce of
treacle and sugar; but it was often uneatable, because the water had been
taken out of the rain tub, a