Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/127

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MISSES JANE AND ANNE TAYLOR
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such wonderful results. Sunday School work led to his giving addresses, which were prized by the parents and others; and so, without intending anything but Christian usefulness to his neighbours, he almost unconsciously became a preacher of the gospel. Evidently he was one of those called of God, and led by a way he had not anticipated into the Christian ministry.

In 1848, Anne (then Mrs. Gilbert) wrote in the Sunday School Magazine an account of her father's beginning a Sabbath School sixty years previously. Mrs. Taylor had with very great reluctance, amounting to anguish, consented to the removal of the family to the country. Soon the garden and rural beauty around "won her heart." She lived fully to assent to the words of one of her daughters, that it was "a happy seclusion." Here the children, the sisters especially, made their own amusements. Jane asked to have a brick pig-sty (!) given to her, which she cleared out for a house, and here the study and the play of the two little girls went on most joyfully. The finding out occupations for themselves, and a certain independence in the selection of pursuits, aided by great activity, made them very happy children.

Mr. Taylor pursued his profession as an engraver, having continuous employment from London, which of course he had occasionally to visit. Except at these absences, the children were the companions of their parents; they listened to their mother's