I believe that really good women teachers are more able to measure the power of a girl’s mind, and force her to do a certain amount of good work than men, who are in my experience very apt to let _young_ pupils slip between their fingers, as it were. At the same time, after a thorough groundwork has been laid, I think first-rate lecturers (almost useless till then) become quite invaluable. Meaning—I want an interview. “Dec. 1st. 1864. Reached Manchester yesterday. Staying now with the Morses. Capital man he,—clear, energetic and practical; a little ‘trammelled’ by clerical bonds, but in the main wide and satisfactory. Spite of the double assurance of Minnie and Ruth that I need not talk of my Unitarianism,—I could not be quite silent, and so tonight, naturally enough, and I think truthfully, gave in my half-declaration. Mr. Morse said (in answer to my question whether we might not be ‘_too_ episcopal’) that, without wishing to exclude any, he wished to have the College decidedly of Church origin, and should be sorry to have other than Church main workers. I said, ‘Then perhaps you had better not have me.’ ‘But do you not belong to the Church?’ ‘Well, I was baptized and confirmed in it.’ ‘But you go there rather than Chapel?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. I go there pretty often. I go where helps me most.’ ‘Where else?’ ‘Oh, mainly Unitarian’, adding ‘I have not, however, any intention of joining the Unitarians, but they have helped me’, and, in answer to a farther remark ‘that I ought to make up my mind clearly black or white’. ‘That I _can’t_ do.... However on the whole, though very unorthodox, I believe I am on the whole most of a Churchwoman, and certainly non- proselytizing, nor, I believe in the least likely to originate any religious difficulty.’ Still he was evidently ‘stumped’, and I daresay I shall hear more of it. Yet, on the whole, feeling as I do, I cannot regret speaking. ‘Be true to every honest thought And as thy thought thy speech.’[35] Footnote 35: Mr. Morse had unwittingly given her some encouragement previously by telling the story of a candidate for Orders, who when asked “If any man broached before you doubts of the divinity of our Lord (‘and I needn’t tell you,’ said Mr. Morse to S. J.-B., ‘what a difficult subject that is’) what answer would you make?” “My Lord, I beg that you won’t suppose that I keep such company.” “Well, but _if_——?” “My Lord, I should take up my hat and walk out.” “(Prudent too),” comments S. J.-B. She visited the Principal of Owens’ College, however, and the Headmaster of the Grammar School, drew up a tentative list of names for Council, and had a long talk with Mrs. Gaskell, who promised to be a “Lady Visitor” if the College was founded. (“I explaining it to mean ‘right to visit’.”)