In point of time this important work was the third book produced by Miss Beale, and a word on its first predecessor will not be out of place here. The little volume on the Deaconesses’ Institution at Kaiserwerth was the outcome of a visit there during one of two summers passed in Germany for the sake of studying schools and foreign methods of education. Miss Beale stayed for a few days with the founder, Pastor Fliedner, and his wife, and studied each department of work. She was specially pleased with the Hospital and Sunday-school, of which she wrote with much appreciation: ‘I never was present at a lesson which seemed to give so much pleasure to children and listeners, as well as to the teacher, who certainly understood the art of drawing out children by means of questions.’ Germany, its schools and similar institutions, its literature and language, even its handwriting, had a great attraction for Miss Beale. She had a few German lessons at the Paris school and afterwards worked at it alone, finally perfecting herself in the language by two long visits to the country, when she stayed principally at Brunswick and Dresden. On one occasion she resided for some time in a German family. In after years she would talk of this time to the girls at Cheltenham, telling them how she would make a point of conversing with the person she understood least easily at any gathering, inquiring the meaning of any word she did not know, to make use of it herself at the first opportunity. ‘And of course I did not mind being laughed at a little,’ she would add with a smile. Hence the praise that German ladies teaching at Cheltenham would accord her knowledge of the language, saying that she never made a mistake either in speaking or writing. She frequently made use of the German character in writing her diary.