a short distance from Broadway, west. Here they provided work for five or six hundred women, until the urgent necessity passed away with the return of peace. Some idea of the enterprise and business talent with which the institution was managed may be got from the fact that they successfully competed for and fulfilled a contract with government to supply a sloop-of-war, or a frigate, with all its necessary clothing, bed-clothes, etc., etc. This House of Industry was the model on which a similar institution in Boston, and others elsewhere, were framed. Mrs. Bethune, some years afterward, endeavored to introduce the plan recommended by Chalmers, of dividing the city into districts, to be visited with such accuracy that no dwelling of the poor should be neglected. The plan was, however, superseded by the system of the Association for the Relief of the Poor, since then so nobly carried out.

Mrs. Bethune's greatest delight was in the education of the young. She loved education as a science as well as a charity. Hence she was always personally attentive to that department of the Orphan Asylum, and taught her Sabbath class until she had long passed her eightieth year. It is not surprising, therefore, that the infant-school system, as organized by Wilderspin, on the basis of Pestalozzi's plan of development, should have deeply interested her. On receiving the necessary books from England and Switzerland, she succeeded, May 23d, 1827, in establishing a society for advancing that method of instruction,

aided by the late able philanthropist, John Griscom, and also by Mr. S. W. Seton, a devoted friend of youth. Several schools (at least nine) were put into successful operation, which Mrs. Bethune actively superintended, and one of them she taught herself, almost entirely, in the worst neighborhood of the Five Points-this more than thirty years ago. The infantschool plan was soon adopted as supplementary to the larger classes in Sunday-schools, and in the primaries of our public schools, so that the good thus begun has been, and will be, perpetuated on a more extended scale. Several books of infant-school instruction, written and edited by Mrs. Bethune, are still highly prized, and must long continue to help the teacher and the taught.

So crowded with incident and work was the life of Mrs. Bethune; and none can estimate the influence of her devoted life. But a few years since her aged, hard-worked brain showed symptoms of weakness, and she retired from active pursuits, to find tranquillity in the home of her son, who was permitted to receive her last breath. The last intelligible sentence that she uttered was, "All has been done well!" She sank to rest like a little child in its father's arms, without a struggle, a sign of suffering, or complaint, closing her own dear eyes, and, by her last voluntary muscular movement, composing her lips as she was wont to do when falling asleep. Her rest came after a long pilgrimage; but her works have followed her before the throne of Him in whom alone she trusted, and that rest is glorious.

APPENDIX.

EXTRACTS FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS, JOURNALS, ETC., OF MRS. JOANNA BETHUNE.

A DAY OF SORROW.

New York, September 21st, 1824. SEPTEMBER 18th, at eight o'clock in the evening, it pleased an all-wise God to take to Himself my beloved husband, and to write upon me, the happiest of wives, WIDOW. To this day I have never been able to look, and often thought I could not bear it; yet the day is come. The Lord has taken away the desire of my eyes with a stroke. Although I can not say that I neither mourn nor weep, nor that my tears do not run down, yet I am enabled to kiss the hand that smites, and to say, "Thy will be done." "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

I desire to record the goodness of God to my dear husband, in making all his bed in his sickness, in placing underneath him the everlasting arms, in allowing him to lean upon his Master's bosom, and sweetly to fall asleep in Jesus, without an agonizing struggle, without even the movement of a muscle, hand or foot. And now the conflict is past. His work is

done, and well done, and his longing desire is satisfied. "Let me go home. Let me go to my Savior. My race is run; my work is done. Let me go."

And now, O thou Infinite Jehovah, before whom I have been pouring out my soul by the bed upon which my beloved husband resigned his happy spirit, I claim Thy promise that Thou, my Maker, will be my husband, and counsel and direct me in every duty before me. I can no longer ask my husband, and receive aid and counsel from him, in every difficulty, as I have done for twenty-nine years; but if Thou lift upon me the light of Thy countenance, and make Thy Word a light to my feet and a lamp to my path, I can not err. I have now no idol to draw off my affections from Thee. My daughters find rest in the houses of their husbands My son, if spared, will settle in life; but the widow will sit desolate. O grant, then, that I may be a widow indeed. Lord, Thou knowest the difficulties before me. Counsel, direct, and enable me to perform them all with a single eye to Thy glory. May I never disgrace Thy name, nor the name of him who is sleeping in the dust.

O Lord, while I ask the forgiveness of my trespasses, enable me to forgive others their trespasses. And now, Lord, this 21st of September, 1824, I solemnly devote myself to Thee, in my new character of widow, and claim all the promises to such in Thy precious Bible. I desire to sit desolate as to man, and to be presented as a chaste virgin unto Thee. I de