ling on a poor villager, dying
and full of gloomy anticipations as to the future, all he could say was,
'Don't be frightened; I dare say you will meet a good many people you
know.' I have often heard old men talk of the time when they used to
take the parson home in a wheelbarrow--but that was before we had a
Sunday-school, at which I was a regular teacher. The church had a
Sunday-school, but not till after the one in the chapel had existed many
years. Of these ornaments of the Church and foes of Dissent, some had
apparently a sense of shame--one of them, at any rate, committed suicide.

At Pakefield, some seven miles from Wrentham, and just on the borders of
Lowestoft, then, as now, the most eastern extremity of England, resided
the Rev. Francis Cunningham. He was a clergyman of piety and
philanthropy, rare at that time in that benighted district, and in this
respect he was aided by his wife, a little dark woman whom I well
remember, a sister of the far-famed John Joseph Gurney, of Earlham. It
is with pleasure I quote the following from the Journal of Caroline Fox:
'A charming story of F. Cunningham coming in to prayers just murmuring
something about the study being on fire, and proceeding to read a long
chapter and make equally long comments thereupon. When the reading was
over, and the fact became public, he observed, "Yes, I saw it was a
little on fire, but I opened the window on leaving the room."' Mr.
Cunningham had much to do with establishing a branch of the British and
Foreign Bible Society in Paris in connection with the Buxtons. In this
way, but on a smaller scale, the Cunninghams were equally distinguished,
and one of the things they had established at Pakefield was an infant
school, to which I, in company with my parents--indeed, I may add, the
whole family--was taken, in order, if possible, that our little village
should possess a similar institution. But my principal pilgrimages to
the Pakefield vicarage were in connection with some mission to aid
Oberlin in his grand work amongst the mountains and valleys of
Switzerland. It appeared Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham had visited the good
man, and watched him in his career, and had come back to England to gain
for him, if possible, sympathy and friends. Mrs. Cunningham had taken
drawings of the principal objects of interest, which had been
lithographed, and these lithographs my mother, who in her way was as
great an enthusiast as Susanna Strickland herself