"The work be Thine, the fruit Thy children's part."--_Keble_.
Look at Uphill Priors in the year 1880. Here are the mothers coming out
of the mothers' meeting. They look, in their neat hats and jackets,
better on this week-day than any one would have done on Sunday sixty
years ago. They are, many of them, the granddaughters, or grandsons'
wives, of the inhabitants in those old times; but they have not the
worn, haggard faces that their parents had when far younger, except one
or two poor things who have drunken husbands. Miss Carbonel (young Miss
Carbonel) and the vicar's wife have been working with them, and reading
to them things that the Bettys and Nannys of those days would not have
understood or cared for.
The white-haired lady, who stops her donkey-chaise to exchange some
affectionate, kindly words, and give out a parcel or two--she is Miss
Sophia; and those elderly women who cluster round for a greeting, they
are her old scholars. Those black eyes are Hoglah's; that neat woman is
Judy! Yes, she has lived among them, and worked among them all her
life, never forgetting that "no good work can be done without drudgery."
She has her Girls' Friendly Society class still in her own little
house, though she has dropped most of her regular out-of-door work of
late years. For the vicar--there is a vicar now--and his daughters
teach constantly in the schools. The children are swarming out now,
orderly and nice, even superior in appearance to some of the mothers
they run up to; and as to learning, the whole parish can read and write,
and the younger ones can send out a letter that would be no disgrace to
a lady or a gentleman.
There is a machine, with its long tail of spikes, coughing along as it
blows off the steam at Farmer Goodenough's. No one dreams of meddling
with it to do any harm. Wages are better, food is cheaper, and there
are comforts in the house of every one tolerably thrifty that the
grandmothers look at as novelties. John and George Hewlett, carpenters
and builders, have a handsome shop and large workshop in the street.
All this has come in the way of gradual change, brought about not by
rioting, but by the force of opinion, and the action of those in
authority.
But how have people been fitted to make a good use of these things--not
to waste them, but to use them as God's good gifts? There has been a
quiet influence at work ever since "they Gobblealls" came up the
roughness of the lanes, and "Mary's approach" was given up.
Captain Edmund, and Mary his wife, lie in their quiet graves, but the
work they did--by justice, by kindness, by teaching, by example--has
gone on growing, and Miss Sophia looks at it, and is thankful, as she
still gives her best in love and experience to the young generation who
are with her and look up to her for help and counsel.
The church is beautiful now, not only to look at, nor merely in the
well-performed music of the services, but in the number and devotion of
the worshippers and communicants. Of course, all is not perfect in the
place--never, never will it be so in this world; but the boys and youths
can, and often are, saved from a fit of thoughtless heathenism by their
clubs and their guilds, and the better families are mostly communicants.
Blots there are, and the vicar sometimes desponds when some fresh evil
crops up; but Miss Sophia always tells him to hope, and that--
"The many prayers, the holy tears, the nurture in the Word,
Have not in vain ascended up before the Gracious Lord."