one who had an important part in the
Protestant renewal of the diaconate of women."[30]

In 1842 a new building was erected for the normal school for
infant-school teachers. The publishing house of the institution was also
started, which issues religious books and tracts. The first work sent
forth was a volume of sermons, presented to the new enterprise by the
late Professor Lange, which went through several editions.

The same year the _Kaiserswerth Almanac_ appeared and a large picture
Bible for schools was published. In 1848 the magazine _Der Armen und
Kranken Freund_ was sent forth as an organ for the deaconess cause, not
only for Kaiserswerth, but for all the institutions that are represented
at the triennial Conferences. The publishing house is an important
source of income, as the institution has little in the way of endowment
beside the produce of the garden land attached to it. At present about
three fourths of the expense are met by the sale of publications and the
fees of patients; the remaining sum is given by friends.

The financial story of Fliedner's life could form a tale of thrilling
interest, if it were separated from other facts and told by itself. He
constantly went forward, purchased houses, added lands, and erected new
homes when he had no money in reserve, but unfailingly when the time
came for payments to be made the sum was obtained in some way or other
to meet them. "We have no endowment," he once said, "but the Lord is our
endowment."

The same year, 1842, the orphan asylum was opened. For a very moderate
sum this receives children who are both fatherless and motherless, and
who belong to the educated middle class, having fathers who were pastors
or professors, or the like. Fliedner hoped not only to provide a home
for these girls befitting their station in life, but to develop among
them those who should make a vocation of the care of children and the
sick, and in this hope he was not disappointed.

In the midst of these successes the hand of God often lay heavily on
Fliedner's family. Brethren and children passed away, and, sorest
affliction of all to him, his wife, who had so closely and
sympathetically shared all his labors, died April 22, 1842. "She was the
first of the deaconesses to die," writes Fliedner. "As she, their
mother, had always led the way for her spiritual daughters in life, so
she was their leader into the valley of the shadow of death."[31] Not
long after this a norma