In the early days of the Seminary, nothing was safe except under lock and key. Sometimes there seemed to be a dawn of improvement, and next, all the buttons would be missing from the week's washing, and the teacher was pretty sure to find that her own pupils were the thieves. Miss Rice tells of one, amply supplied with every thing by her parents, yet noted for her thefts. Indeed, sons and daughters were alike trained to such practices. In 1843, Miss Fiske could not keep a pin in her pin-cushion; little fingers took them as often as she turned away, and lest she should tempt them to lie, she avoided questioning them, unless her own eye had seen the theft. No wonder she wrote, "I feel very weak, and were it not that Christ has loved these souls, I should be discouraged; but he has loved them, and he loves them still." If the pins were found with the pupils, the answer was ready--"We found them," or, "You gave them to us;" and nothing could be proved. But one summer evening, just before the pupils were to pass through her room to their beds on the flat roof, knowing that none of that color could be obtained elsewhere, the teacher put six black pins in her cushion, and stepped out till they had passed. As soon as they were gone, she found the pins gone too, and at once called them back. She told them of her loss, but none knew any thing about it. She showed them that no one else had been there, and therefore they must know. Six pairs of little hands were lifted up, as they said, "God knows we have not got them;" but this only called forth the reply, "I think that God knows you have got them," and she searched each one carefully, without finding them. She then proposed to kneel down where they stood, and ask God to show where they were, adding, "He may not see it best to show me now, but he will do it some time." She laid the matter before the Lord, and, just as they rose from their knees, remembered that she had not examined their cloth caps. She now proposed to examine them, and one pair of hands went right up to her cap. Of course she was searched first, and there were the six pins, so nicely concealed in its folds that nothing was visible but their heads. This incident did much good. The pupils looked on the discovery as an answer to prayer, and so did their teacher. They began to be afraid to steal when God so exposed their thefts, and she was thankful for an answer so immediate. The offender is now a pious, useful woman.