The wish to enlighten the charity children became universal, and the three Miss Browns were unanimously besought to divide the school into classes, and to assign each class to the superintendence of two young ladies.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so; the three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids, and carefully excluded the young ones.

Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced to the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of violence the general indignation against the three Miss Browns might have vented itself, had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the tide of public feeling.

Mrs.Johnson Parker, the mother of seven extremely fine girls--all unmarried--hastily reported to several other mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old women, and children innumerable, in the free seats near her pew, were in the habit of coming to church every Sunday, without either bible or prayer-book.

Was this to be borne in a civilised country?
Could such things be tolerated in a Christian land?
Never! A ladies' bible and prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed: president, Mrs.
Johnson Parker; treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson Parker: subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the free-seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was given out, on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such a dropping of books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally impossible to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards.
The three Miss Browns, and their party, saw the approaching danger, and endeavoured to avert it by ridicule and sarcasm.

Neither the old men nor the old women could read their books, now they had got them, said the three Miss Browns.