“What one feels more especially about Miss Buss is her utter sincerity. Whether she was helping you in a difficulty or promoting some great educational movement you felt she did it without thought of self. There was no touch of the little mind about her, no thought of adding to her own prestige. She spent her life in the cause of education with loyalty and single-hearted devotion. It was the happy lot of some of us to be associated with her in her work. We have indeed lost a friend whose greatness of mind and purpose ever stimulated us. We can only be thankful for the privilege which has been ours, and seek to carry out the high aims which she set before us.” We know now—a quarter of a century after—what has been achieved by this great worker whose life remains as an inspiration for the times to come. What she aspired to may be best given in her own self-estimate in those early days. I had sent her an account of a great spiritual work done by Mary Lyon, a distinguished American teacher, and received in acknowledgment the following note:— “July, 1871. “DEAR MISS RIDLEY, “I have read Mary Lyon’s ‘Training School.’ In the past I have often had visions of such, or similar work, but as life has grown out upon me I have seen these higher hopes and aspirations fade a good deal. Still, I recognize many blessings and some usefulness in my life. It has not been a wasted or misused one. One must do what one can, and leave the issue to Him who guides all things right. “Yours affectionately, “FRANCES M. BUSS.” From this modest self-appraisement I turn now to the thick volumes—six of them, almost all in her own handwriting—notes of the addresses she gave in school and at Myra, embracing every topic—moral and religious—that touches a girl’s life.[11] How they affected the girls who heard them letter after letter tells; and we, not so favoured, may imagine what they must have been, given in that clear impressive voice, as the results of most careful thought, and brightened by anecdote and illustration, gathered in these note-books, from everyday life and from past history. What is most striking in these notes is not merely an observation which let nothing slip, but the wise selection of a varied culture and extensive reading amounting to high scholarship. And as we remember that this work was all done amid the pressure of daily teaching, through all the long struggle of the establishment of the new schools, and then amidst the whirl of public life, we scarcely can tell where lies the greatest wonder—in the work itself, or in the humility which could include it all in those simple words: “but one must do what one can!” Footnote 11: