“I hope nothing worse than broken glass has happened at your house in consequence of the terrible shock this morning. Thirteen of my windows are shattered, but I am too thankful for the preservation of the young inmates of my house to mind anything.
“My first thought was that the stack of chimneys had blown down, and, in falling, had crushed the roof in on the beds of Mary and Ethel P—— and Edith A——. The noise seemed to come from that quarter. In an instant I was upstairs, to ascertain if they were safe.
“I find myself even now shaking from the shock to the nervous system. My girls behaved admirably. They were all quiet.”
From the early days to the latest Miss Buss gave short addresses weekly on some moral text, choosing frequently some recent story of great deed or high thought, and making it interesting as she brought it to bear on the daily life of the girls. As one of the staff remarks—
“The high moral tone of the school was materially helped by these weekly addresses. Four forms met her in the Lecture Hall, and teachers and pupils listened to her wise counsel. One of her favourite texts was the life of Dorothy Wordsworth, as she earnestly pleaded with the girls, above all things, to aim at being true women, and not to let their school-work in any way interfere with their home duties, never forgetting that they must bring either sunshine or cloud into the home-life.”
Here is a little sketch of the Sunday talks at Myra—
“I love to picture that drawing-room, Miss Buss to the left of the fire, her lamp on the table at her right, and the girls grouped around her at the fire, often some at her feet.... I never heard any one read as she did, and especially on those Sundays! Every word told. And then she would pause, and send some truth home by an illustration from her own experience.... After the holidays, she was generally full of some new thought: Mrs. Norton’s ‘Lady of La Garaye’ was brought after a happy holiday at Dinan.... She spent hours in the preparation of the Myra and school addresses, a testimony to the stress she laid on their importance.”
There are some pretty little glimpses of the inner life at Myra, given by a pupil who spent there a somewhat prolonged school-life, in which she came into very close relation to the beloved teacher—
“My earliest recollection of Miss Buss was when I went in for the entrance exam.; in a state of great trepidation, I accompanied her along the corridor to take off my things, and I think she saw my poor fingers shaking, for she suddenly took me in her warm embrace, and said, ‘Do your best, my dear child, and you must leave the rest,’ and then, looking me in the face, with another kiss, she said, ‘I think we are going to be friends.’ And the radiant smile that accompanied the kiss won my heart and banished my fears.
“I had been at Myra Lodge only a few weeks when, one of the girls having acted contrary to regulations, a warm discussion on her conduct took place in the playroom downstairs, some defending and some disapproving of her conduct. We were quite unaware that in the heat of discussion our voices were loud enough to be heard upstairs; it was a point on which I felt strongly, and I expressed myself somewhat emphatically for a new-comer. The next day Miss Buss sent for me, said she knew of the incident, and ‘you said so-and-so, my child; I am delighted to think you feel in that way, you were on the right side, and remember, dear, I shall always expect to find you on the right side.’ How often that belief in my being ‘on the right side’ helped me to make the struggle for the right only I can tell!”