This made Hannah More very unhappy. She liked to be loved, she could not bear to be hated; she who was ready to see good in all, could not bear to be forced to see evil. Then her poor people upheld her, and school-teachers and church-workers came forward to bear witness to the world-wide good her writings had done. Sympathy flowed in from all sides, and she found heart to go on again.
At last the happy home was broken up—the bright home where the poor people had never failed to find warmth and shelter and a welcome from the five sisters.
The three eldest died first. Still, through all the sad partings, Hannah More bravely worked on, while she had strength for it, writing when she could, and keeping bright those who still remained around her.
A few years later Patty died; she was the nearest of all to Hannah’s heart, and the “aching void” she felt after her sister’s death affected her health. Long and dangerous illnesses constantly left her unable to work for many months. Her work had been taken up by others now, and the “tide she had helped to turn had already swept past her.”
“I learns geography and the harts and senses,” boasted a little girl in a county parish, meaning the arts and sciences.
“I am learning syntax,” a little servant said to Hannah More when questioned about her school.
Hannah More died at the age of eighty-eight, after years of intense suffering. She had lived to see how education was helping the poorer classes, and stamping out crime; how a little love and kindness had helped even the rough miners in their work, and how the children, taught in the village schools, were already growing up better and happier men and women, and it pleased her, long after her health and memory had failed, to hear that they still remembered the name of Hannah More.