Page:The English Peasant.djvu/219

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WEALDEN LIFE AND CHARACTER.
205

in a half-circle. They were reading out of a lesson-book, the subject being "The Third Foe to Salvation—the Flesh." In the upper part of the building was another large apartment, and used at present as a play-room, but intended for another dormitory, but as yet the orphanage only contains fifty boys, whereas it is constructed for two hundred.

The brothers, I think, were ten in number, and are liable to be removed and sent elsewhere at any time. Their vows are the three ordinary ones,—poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their chief work is educating the young, and they have such faith in their system that this brother said that if a boy six years of age were placed in his hands he would undertake to mould him according to his own will. When the boys grow up they are rarely devoted to the priesthood. On the contrary, they are sent into various secular stations abroad, or in England. Carpentering, tailoring and baking are taught in the house. But they are educated not only for artisans, but some even enter the liberal professions. One was already in the Ordnance Survey, and two were clerks in London. They all wear a brown holland skeleton suit in summer, and a corduroy one in winter. A friend asked one of the boys, who was working in the garden, how he liked it; he gave no direct answer, but replied in this characteristic fashion,—"If I were to speak against the orphanage, should I not be an ungrateful boy?"

Faith still lingers in the Weald, genuine and powerful. "I never saw such beautiful death-beds as I have seen in Sussex," said a clergyman to the writer. Among the cottages I visited was one in a drear, dilapidated row. I entered. It was a large, bare room, with a brick floor. I was invited, however, to ascend the staircase, and there in the upper room lay a pale, intelligent woman. She had been ill for years, and was so weak that she could not speak, spelling out all she wished to say by means of a large alphabet. She had had a bad husband, and now was partially supported by the parish. On her bed were a number of religious papers and tracts, which she gave to every one who came, so that there was not a house in the town without one. It was easy to see that she was carefully tended