she had the courage to try again. Unfortunately, in her anxiety to avoid her former error, she ran into the opposite extreme. Mrs Gower was selected from numerous other applicants on account of her having previously held office as matron of a prison, and possessing testimonials as to her special fitness for the executive department.

Accustomed to deal with the worst side of human nature, and to the enforcement of the necessarily rigid rules of prison-life, in which all must pass through one routine, Mrs Gower had become a mere disciplinarian, treating those under her charge in the Home as though their minds were all of precisely the same pattern, and that a very bad one.

If half the stories which reached me respecting her luxurious self-indulgent life were true, the effect upon those to whom she was supposed to be an example was undoubtedly bad. And if there were good grounds for the statement that her appointment to the office of prison matron had been to her a rise in life, it quite sufficiently accounted for the want of refinement in thought and habit, which occasioned her to live too luxuriously, and deck herself in too rich clothing for one living amongst women supposed to be endeavouring to strengthen themselves against yielding to temptation.

Again, good as he undoubtedly was, Mr Wyatt, upon whom Mrs Osborne depended for spiritual help, was not fitted for the task. He was too young, as well as too naturally timid and shy, to manage a number of women, who deceived him with the pretence of reformation when it suited their purpose better than openly laughing at him. Long afterwards, he told me how terribly he used to dread his visits to the Home, and how much he was troubled at the little effect of his teachings. It took him a long time to understand that the best natures might appear to be the worst under such training as Mrs Gower's.

That Mrs Osborne herself was quite satisfied with the new management, is too much to say. But although Mrs Gower was not a woman after her heart, past failures had rendered Mrs Osborne distrustful of her own judgment; and she could not deny that there at least appeared to be better effects produced now than during the former management. Although there were occasional failures, which nothing could gloss over, Mrs Gower could point to the fact that a certain number of the inmates were annually drafted into service, and whatever became of them, they did not reappear at the Home.