opted by Mrs. Fry each woman was enabled to
earn sufficient money to provide for board and lodging until some
opening for a decent maintenance presented itself. They thus obtained a
fair start.

Provision was also made for instruction of both women and children on
board ship. It may be asked how children came there? Generally they were
of tender years and the offspring of vice; the authorities could do
nothing with them; so, perforce, they were allowed to accompany their
mothers. Out of the batch on board this transport-vessel, fourteen were
found to be of an age capable of instruction. A small space was,
therefore, set apart in the stern of the vessel for a school-room, and
there, daily, under the tuition of one of the women better taught than
the rest, these waifs of humanity learned to read, knit and sew. This
slender stock of learning was better than none, wherewith to commence
life at the Antipodes.

Almost daily, for five weeks, Mrs. Fry and her coadjutors visited the
vessel, laboring to these good ends. Ultimately, however, the _Maria_
had to sail, and many were the doubts and fears as to whether the good
work begun would be carried on when away from English shores. No matron
was there to superintend and to direct the women: if they continued in
the path marked out for them, their poor human nature could not be so
fallen after all. Mrs. Fry had a kind of religious service with the
convicts the last time she visited them. She occupied a position near
the door of the cabin, with the women facing her, and ranged on the
quarter-deck, while the sailors occupied different positions in the
rigging and on other vantage points. As Mrs. Fry read in a solemn voice
some passages from her pocket-Bible, the sailors on board the other
ships leaned over to hear the sacred words. After the reading was done,
she knelt down, and commended the party of soon-to-be exiles to God's
mercy, while those for whom she prayed sobbed bitterly that they should
see her face no more. Does it not recall the parting of Paul with the
elders at Miletus? Doubtless the memory of that simple service was in
after days often the only link between some of these women and goodness.

As time went on, many anxious remembrances and hopes were cast after
the convicts who had been shipped to New South Wales. To her sorrow, she
found, from the most reliable testimony, that once the poor lost
wretches were landed in the colony, they were placed in circumstances