under an apple tree of his mother's, which had soon after died. On this the wise-acres of the parish called a vestry meeting, and agreed that since Methodist preaching blighted the apple trees, it must be banished with rotten eggs. A fortune-teller was consulted whether the singing were really Methodistic, and sagely made answer that, if the hymns were not, the tunes were, since they were not in Farmer Clap's book! However, the Misses More, finding the curate and the poor really anxious for the schools, built a house, with the aid of their supporters, Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Thornton.
Having finished the tracts, Hannah was writing another book dealing with the upper classes, called Strictures on Female Education. Hitherto her troubles had been all local, from the ignorance of the petty tyrants of the fields, the failure of her instruments, or disappointment in her pupils, but this book brought her into more serious difficulties. It was one of those works which it seems inevitable that a thoughtful woman should contribute to the good influences on her own generation. It was full of good sense; indeed, it is amusing to see how similar were the errors of the former generation to those of our own time. There is, for instance, a protest against abridgments and compendiums that might serve the present day, and again, a chapter called "On Definitions" has a capital protest against exaggerated language. "A
