We found--what indeed we had expected--that the poor children were very ignorant, but we also found what we did not expect--namely, such an acute intelligence and aptitude to receive instruction as admonished us of the danger of leaving them to grow up under evil influences to become master-spirits in crime and pests to society.

Many of the faces that we had just seen were very expressive--indeed, painfully so.

Some of them seemed to exhibit an unnatural and premature development of those passions whose absence makes childhood so attractive.
"Hunger! ay, its traces were also plainly written there.

It is painful to see the marks of hunger on the human face, but to see the cheeks of childhood blanched by famine, to behold the attenuated limbs and bright wolfish eyes, ah! that is a sight.
"The organization of a day-school came next.

There were hundreds of children in the district close about the mission who were wholly without instruction.