fears. In 1852, after some delay at Huntsville, Texas, Miss Rankin opened a school for Mexican children in Brownsville, Texas, just opposite Matamoras, in Mexico. In this school the Bible was daily and faithfully taught. Some of her pupils lived across the river, and frequently returned to their homes in Mexico carrying with them the New Testaments she gave them. These girls were watched by a company of French nuns who had established a school close by Miss Rankin, and also by the Romish priests everywhere. Sometimes their Testaments were snatched away and burned by lynx-eyed inquisitors, but most of them escaped, and many are to-day bringing forth a harvest of a hundredfold.
In 1855, Miss Rankin became convinced that the work of Bible-distribution required the whole time of one person, and applied to the American and Foreign Christian Union (New York) to seek for a Christian man who could speak Spanish to come to Brownsville and, as the door opened, to enter Mexico. But such a man could not be found, and rather than see the work hindered Miss Rankin secured the services of an assistant in her school and devoted herself to Bible-distribution. American friends said, "The Mexicans turn your Bibles over to the priests to burn." After investigation, it was found that this was very seldom the case. She says, "I found that the Mexicans concealed them in the most careful manner, taking them out and reading them by night. I went one day to the house where one of my pupils resided to ask concerning her absence, and also to make inquiry after a Bible I had furnished her. A report had crept into the school that she had exchanged it with the nuns for a saint, and that they had burned it. The mother of the girl met me at the door, and with stream-
