her president nor vice-president, nor
treasurer nor secretary, nor collector nor missionary; but she is a
power over all these, supreme, though nameless. She is likewise the
editor (with a sub-editor for work) of the tracts and exhortations;
and in the course of this duty she mingles charity with business in a
way well worthy of imitation. The productions in question are usually
received gratuitously, for advice of all kinds, as we have remarked,
is common and plenty; but sometimes the demand is so great as to
require the aid of a purchased pen. On such occasions the individual
employed by the managing partner is a broken-down clergyman, who was
deprived at once of his sight and his living by the visitation of God,
and who writes for the support of a wife and fourteen children. This
respectable character is induced, by fear of competition, and the
strong necessity of feeding sixteen mouths with something or other, to
use his pen for the Association at half-price; while he is compelled
by his circumstances to reside in the very midst of the destitution he
addresses, where he learns in suffering what he teaches in prose-ing.
But, notwithstanding all this beautiful management, her schemes, being
of human device, sometimes fail. An example of this is offered by the
one she originated on hearing the first terrible cry of Destitution in
the Highlands. Under her auspices, the Female Benevolent Trousers
Society became extremely popular. Its object, of course, was to supply
these garments gratuitously to the perishing mountaineers, in lieu of
the cold unseemly kilt. It was discovered, however, after a time, that
the Highlanders do not wear kilts at all; and the society was broken
up, and its funds handed over, at the suggestion of the institutor,
for the Encouragement of the interesting Mieau tribe of Old Christians
in Abyssinia. The tenets of this tribe, you are aware, are in several
instances wonderfully similar to our own; only, they abjure in their
totality the filthy rags of the moral law, which has drawn upon them
the bitter persecution of the heathenish Mohammedans in their
neighbourhood.

We have observed that the managing partner is impatient of another
counsellor. This is a remarkable trait in her character. Even the
woman of the world looks with approbation upon the doings of a
congener, when they do not come into collision with her own; even the
everyday married lady bends her head confidentially towards her
double,