e number who left was three thousand one
hundred and twenty-nine. About three-fourths of the scholars are
females. A large proportion of the latter are over fifteen years
of age, and consist of girls employed in the mills. More than
five hundred of these scholars have, during the last year,
become personally interested in practical piety, and more than
six hundred have joined themselves to the several churches. Now
let it be borne in mind, that there are four or five Sunday
Schools in the city, some of which are large and flourishing,
not included in this statement. Let it be borne in mind, too,
that a great proportion of these scholars are the factory girls,
and furthermore, that these most gratifying results just given,
have nothing in them extraordinary--they are only the common,
ordinary results of several of the past years. There has been no
unusual excitement; no noise, no commotion. Silently, quietly,
unobtrusively, from Sabbath to Sabbath, in these little
nurseries of truth, duty and religion, has the good seed been
sowing and springing up--watered by the dews, and warmed by the
smiles of heaven--to everlasting life....

"I shall now proceed to enumerate some of the influences which
have been most powerful in bringing about these results. Among
these are the example and watchful care and oversight of the
boarding house keepers, the superintendents, and the
overseers.... But a power vastly more active, all pervading and
efficient, than any and all of these, is to be found in the
jealous and sleepless watchfulness, over each other, of the
girls themselves.... The strongest guardianship of their own
character, as a class, is in their own hands, and they will not
suffer either overseer or superintendent to be indifferent to
this character with impunity.

"The relationship which is here established between the Sunday
school scholar and her teacher--between the member of the church
and her pastor--the attachments which spring up between them,
are rendered close and strong by the very circumstances in which
these girls are placed. These relationships and these
attachments take the place of the domestic ties and the home
affections, and they have something of the strength and fervency
of these."

The next extract shows their prosperity in a pecuniary point.

"T