“Oh, yes! If we could get a good teacher, she would be well paid for her trouble; but none of us know where to get one, and the men folks are too busy to go and look for one.”
“Have you any clergyman in the place?”
“No, madam.”
“Do the people here ever go to any church?”
“Yes, madam; they sometimes go off a good piece to W., where there is preaching sometimes.”
It was in another village of the West, and one as destitute as this, that a young lady from New-England, who came out under the care of a clergyman, stationed herself to rear up a school. She agreed to teach for a small sum, and to board around with the parents of her pupils.
Most of these parents were from the South, where they were unaccustomed to the notions of comfort and thrift which the young lady possessed.
She not only taught the children at school, but, in each family where she boarded, taught the housekeeper how to make good yeast and good bread. She also taught the young women how to cut dresses and how to braid straw for bonnets.
Her instructions in the day-school and in the Sunday-school, and her influence in the families, were unbounded, and almost transforming. No minister, however well qualified, could have wrought such favourable changes in so short a time.