Page 139 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

Chapter 19

FINANCES

AccoMpANrED By Bnornrn Stextslaus, the replace-
I ment at Bury for Brother Alphonse who was to
go to America in 1850, Mr. Ryken crossed the Channel
sometime in July, 1849. What reason he had for think-
ing that he would send a colony of Brothers is not known
definitely. There is the possibility that he had agreed
to send some of his men with Fathers De Jonge and
Nuyts, Crosier Fathers from Holland who had been
assigned to found a mission in Wisconsin. They were
to leave in 1850. Mr. Ryken's good friend, Father Van
Beek, who had asked his bishop for permission to give
up his work at the deaf and dumb institute and join
these pioneers on the American mission, had been re-
fused on account of his age.
In Bury, Mr. Ryken found the Brothers still adhering
to the rugged program they had adopted in their first
months in England. Seven days a week from early
morning until nine o'clock at night, they devoted them-
selves to the work. The enrollment at the parish school,
boys'division, had increased to one hundred. In the
evening-school, conducted at their residence, they had
about forty in attendance. Many of these were adults.
In their Sunday School they took care of a hundred
boys, and the Sunday School in those days meanr not
only instruction in religion but hours devoted to read-
ing and writing. It was the only schooling that the
children of the poor could afiord.
The disturbing factor in the midsr of all this acrivity
was the knowledge that St. Marie's parish could not