“June 17th.—Next week we expect Mrs. Moon out.... Mr. and Mrs. Bowskill from San Salvador are coming to spend a week, and all the Trustees are coming for two nights. This will make a party of ten or eleven to provide for. In the middle of July the Institute breaks up for two months’ vacation, during which many things will have to be done which hitherto have been left undone.”
This meeting of the Trustees was much upon Mrs. Lewis’s mind from the date of the Colonial Minister’s visit. The instinct of the hostess was strong in her, and she must needs do all within her power for the comfort and good entertainment of so large a company of friends. When one remembers the exacting and incessant calls of every day, following the hardships and long strain of previous months, it is a matter of regret that this additional stress could not be avoided. Every week-end she was completely spent, but resting as much as possible on Saturday and Sunday she commenced again on Monday, kept the pace and would not be restrained.
On June 30th, she wrote the following report of her work to be read at the Trustees’ meeting held the next day:—
“This session has been very encouraging, and gives good promise for the future; the women have attended the classes regularly, and shown much interest in their work.
“Of the fourteen women who came into the Institute, only five could read, write, or sew. The others, with two exceptions, have made good progress in these subjects, and from among these, two have done so well that they should be reading in their New Testaments in a few weeks’ time.
“It is of the utmost importance that teachers’ wives should be able to read, and I would like to suggest that in stations where the men are receiving preparatory training some arrangement should be made whereby their wives should at least be taught to read.
“Four of the women are so far beyond the others that they ought to have been taught separately, but that has been impossible, owing to my being single-handed. I feel, however, that they are all benefiting more or less, and some seven or eight bid fair to make useful teachers when their term of training is over.
“One hour and a half in the afternoons has been occupied with ordinary school subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic, elements of geography, including the compass and maps of Palestine and Congo, and sewing, during which I am reading aloud from ‘The Holy War.’
“In the mornings we have had two classes a day, in which we have studied the following subjects: Old Testament: first fifteen chapters Genesis. New Testament: first three chapters Luke, and life of John the Baptist. History of the Bible—till time of Wycliffe. Natural history of trees and flowers. Simple hygiene and physiology: cleanliness, prevention of disease, structure of the eye. Object-lesson: paper, cloth, slates, glass. These last three subjects, which were almost entirely new to them, have excited much interest, and I trust have been and will still more in the future be the means of opening their eyes and minds to the wonders of God’s universe.
“On Friday mornings I have given them a series of talks on the Christian life, taking as my subjects love, truth, purity, thankfulness, joy, peace, temperance, prayer. After which a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes have been spent in prayer, led by the women themselves; and it has been good to listen as they voiced their thankfulness to God for giving them this opportunity of learning more of His works and will, and asked for more grace and wisdom in the various relationships of life.