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CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD   15

But I must not stop at this period of my reminiscences to speak of other sisters than Adele, with whom my heart was then so intimately associated. I am enormously indebted to the influence of her pious, serene, and resolute disposition. Though she was compelled to pass the greater part of her life lying on her back, she was so energetic in other ways, and so capable of endurance, that she overcame difficulties that would have been insurmountable to most women who were equally handicapped. She was active in setting up schools and teaching the poor. She had a considerable correspondence, and exerted a wide influence among all classes during many years. Her natural capacity was of an unusually high order, and many who knew her well, and whose opinions deserve respect, thought that a slight betterment of opportunity and circumstances might have caused her name to be as widely loved and known as those of any of our English saints or heroines. She passed her life under an abiding sense of the presence of God and of duty to man, without which few persons have ever done great things. She was most unconventional in her ways, and her remarkable courage was recognised by all the family.

She married a clergyman, the Rev. Shirley Bunbury, shortly after my father's death in 1844, .but was left a widow soon afterwards, with one little girl, on whom she lavished the same educational care that she had bestowed upon myself, but with fuller knowledge. That little girl is now in her turn a widow, with a large and grown-up family. She was married iii 1866 to John C. Baron Lethbridge of Tregeare, in Cornwall, about six miles west of Launceston.