doing the Great Master's work.... I fear for myself, lest even this
great mercy should prove a temptation, and lead me to come before I
am called, or enter service I am not prepared for.... This matter
has been for many years struggling in my mind, long before I
married, and once or twice when in London I hardly knew how to
refrain. However, since a way has thus been made for me it appears
as if I dared not stop the work; if it be a right one may it go on
and prosper, if not, the sooner stopped the better.

Very soon after penning these words, the Meeting of which she was a
member acknowledged Mrs. Fry as a minister, and thus gave its sanction
to her speaking in their religious assemblies.

But, not content with this form of service, she visited among her poor
neighbors, bent on actively doing good. She secured a large room
belonging to an old house, opposite her own dwelling, and established a
school for girls on the Lancasterian pattern there. Very quickly, under
the united efforts of Mrs. Fry, the incumbent of the parish, and a
benevolent young lady named Powell, a school of seventy girls was
established, and kept in a prosperous condition. This school was still
in working order a few years ago.

Plashet House was a depot of charity. Calicoes, flannels, jackets,
gowns, and pinafores were kept in piles to clothe the naked; drugs
suited to domestic practice were stored in a closet, for healing the
sick; an amateur soup-kitchen for feeding the hungry was established in
a roomy out-building, and this long years before public soup-kitchens
became the rage; whilst copies of Testaments were forthcoming on all
occasions to teach erring feet the way to Heaven. But her charity did
not stop with these things.