and twenty-nine.  About three-fourths of the scholars are females.  A large proportion of the latter are over fifteen years of age, and consist of girls employed in the mills.  More than five hundred of these scholars have, during the last year, become personally interested in practical piety, and more than six hundred have joined themselves to the several churches.  Now let it be borne in mind, that there are four or five Sunday Schools in the city, some of which are large and flourishing, not included in this statement.  Let it be borne in mind, too, that a great proportion of these scholars are the factory girls, and furthermore, that these most gratifying results just given, have nothing in them extraordinary—­they are only the common, ordinary results of several of the past years.  There has been no unusual excitement; no noise, no commotion.  Silently, quietly, unobtrusively, from Sabbath to Sabbath, in these little nurseries of truth, duty and religion, has the good seed been sowing and springing up—­watered by the dews, and warmed by the smiles of heaven—­to everlasting life....

“I shall now proceed to enumerate some of the influences which have been most powerful in bringing about these results.  Among these are the example and watchful care and oversight of the boarding house keepers, the superintendents, and the overseers....  But a power vastly more active, all pervading and efficient, than any and all of these, is to be found in the jealous and sleepless watchfulness, over each other, of the girls themselves....  The strongest guardianship of their own character, as a class, is in their own hands, and they will not suffer either overseer or superintendent to be indifferent to this character with impunity.

“The relationship which is here established between the Sunday school scholar and her teacher—­between the member of the church and her pastor—­the attachments which spring up between them, are rendered close and strong by the very circumstances in which these girls are placed.  These relationships and these attachments take the place of the domestic ties and the home affections, and they have something of the strength and fervency of these.”

The next extract shows their prosperity in a pecuniary point.

“The average wages, clear of board, amount to about two dollars a week.  Many an aged father or mother, in the country, is made happy and comfortable, by the self-sacrificing contributions from the affectionate and dutiful daughter here.  Many an old homestead has been cleared of its incumbrances, and thus saved to the family by these liberal and honest earnings.  To the many and most gratifying and cheering facts, which, in the course of this examination I have had occasion to state, I here add a few others relating to the matter now under discussion, furnished me by Mr. Carney, the treasurer of the Lowell Institution for Savings.  The whole number