Excellent Women by Various
page 29 of 379 (07%)
page 29 of 379 (07%)
|
Fry's labours at Newgate, and he had established a society called the
Rhenish Westphalian Prison Association for similar work in Germany. Everywhere authority was given to see whatever the travellers desired, so that this Continental journey was very prosperous and satisfactory. They got back to England in the autumn of 1840. In 1841 she once more went with her brother Joseph, who was going to some of the northern countries of Europe. She knew that such a journey would be fatiguing to a frame much enfeebled by illness and a life of continuous exertion, but she still had an earnest desire to work for the good of others, if it seemed the will of her Lord and Master. "I had very decided encouragement," she says, "from Friends, particularly the most spiritual among them;" and so, all difficulties being removed, she started, with her brother and two young nieces. The most interesting of all their North German experiences was visiting the Prussian Royal Family, then in Silesia, whither, on leaving Berlin, they had been invited to follow them. Mrs. Fry had always misgivings in regard to her intercourse with exalted personages, chiefly, she herself explained, lest in anything she said or did she might not "adorn the doctrine of God her Saviour." But she was soon put at ease as to this, on finding that she was coming to real Christians, as devoted as she was to the service of the Master, for such there have generally been among members of the House of Brandenburg. The King and Queen of Prussia were at the time residing at Ermansdorf, and most of the Royal Family were with them or in the neighbourhood. Addresses and conversations on matters connected with prisons or with religious liberty were prominent as usual, but the especial feature in the Silesian visit was the intercourse with the poor Tyrolese refugees from Zillerthal, expelled from their own country by the Austrian Government, and settled in |
|