"Well, ma'am, if I did, it was no harm; a great many respectable people cried too!" The death of David Garrick affected Hannah More deeply. Mrs. Garrick sent for her at once in her trouble, and, though ill in bed at the time, Hannah More came to comfort her friend. After this she spent much time with Mrs. Garrick, often in the depths of the country giving up her time to reading and writing, and taking long walks to the pretty villages round. Then she built herself a little house near Bristol, where she went to live with her sister Patty. They made long expeditions together to villages round, and they soon discovered what a bad state the country people were in. In a village near, she set to work to establish a school for the little children, and was soon rewarded by finding that three hundred were ready and longing to be taught. Difficulties lay at every turn; the rich farmers objected to the children being taught, and religion brought into the country. "It makes the people so lazy and useless," they said. "It will make the people better and more industrious," urged Hannah More; "they will work from higher and nobler motives, instead of merely for money and drink!" At last they consented to have a school, and the children came by hundreds to be taught. Then she went on to two mining villages high up on the Mendip Hills. In these villages the people were even more ignorant than those at Cheddar; they thought the ladies came to carry off their children as slaves. For at this time the selling of little children as slaves had reached a terrible height, and many great men, Pitt, Fox, and others, were doing what they could to have it abolished by an Act of Parliament. It was into districts where no policemen dared to go that Hannah More and her sister ventured. There was no clergyman for miles round; one village had a curate living twelve miles away; another village had a clergyman who himself drank to excess, and was never sober enough to preach. There was one Bible in the village, but that was used to prop up a flower-pot. Such was the state of affairs when Hannah More first went among them. Soon a school was established, and again the children were ready and willing to be taught. Before long they had six schools and as many as twelve hundred children were being taught. Very soon their work bore fruit. "Several day-labourers coming home late from harvest, so tired that they could hardly stand, will not go to rest till they have been into the school for a chapter and a prayer," wrote Hannah More. In 1792 she wrote "Village Politics," at the request of friends, to try and give a more healthy turn to politics in England. She did not put her own name to it, but called herself "Will Chip." One of her friends discovered who had written it, and sitting down he began a letter, "My dear Mrs. Chip," thanking her for giving to the world such a popular and wholesome tract.