Half-a-dozen women in wretched clothes sat in the entrance-room with their boys, for whom they hoped to gain admittance into the school, and were now, therefore, waiting till the directors of the establishment made their appearance. These gentlemen kindly invited me to be present at the examination of these mothers. The women were brought in one at a time, and one and all were made to tell her history and explain her circumstances. The examination was carried on with earnestness and precision. The result of all, however, was, that there was not one of the women now present who had a right to the assistance which they desired. On one or two occasions I could not help admiring the patience of the directors. Above all, it seemed to me, that these mothers needed to go to school even more than their children. When will people come to regard in all its full extent the influence of the mother upon the child? When will people come to reflect on the education of mothers in its higher sense? My conductor in Liverpool, Mr. B——, the noble and kind Home Missionary,[1] recognized one of these women, and related to me the history of herself and her husband—a horrible history of drunkenness, which had almost ended in suicide. Later in the day I visited the evening school for girls, also of the ragged class, and heard there a remarkably sweet and beautiful song. Later still I accompanied my friendly conductor to a temperance meeting, held in the same building, and which meets every Thursday, and where the Missionary was accustomed to meet and converse with the poorest brethren of his congregation. The wind blew and the rain poured down. I was astonished, however, to see when we entered, that the room was filled with people who evidently had not much to defend themselves with from the wind and rain. The benches were filled both with men and women. It became crowded and very hot. Mr. B—— opened the meeting with a speech about the dangers and consequences of drunkenness, and as he warmed in his subject he related, yet without mentioning any name, the history of the mother whom he had this day seen, beseeching that public charity would take charge of her son. The assembly, which during the moral treatise they had just heard had evidently become somewhat drowsy, woke up at once during the relation of that story, and when the narrator arrived at the catastrophe, in which the intoxicated woman, urged on by the madness of thirst, drank up half a bottle of oil of vitriol, a general expression of horror might have been heard, especially from the lips of the women.