t
as it would if it were asked about our own relations, were it not that
we know it is asked in ignorance by those who have never had the
opportunity of experiencing, or have missed the happiness of enjoying,
true friendship with the people of this land. Those who have known that
happiness, know the limitless loyalty and the tender, wonderful love
that is lavished on the one who feels so unworthy of it all. If there is
distance and want of sympathy between those who are called to be workers
together with the great Master, is not something wrong? Simple,
effortless intimacy, that closeness of touch which is friendship indeed,
is surely possible. But rather we would put it otherwise, and say that
without it service together, of the only sort we would care to know, is
perfectly impossible.

[Illustration: SELLAMUTTU AND SUSEELA.]

In our work all along we have had this joy to the full. God in His
goodness gave us from the first those who responded at once to the
confidence we offered them. In India the ideal of a consecrated life is
a life with no reserves--which seeks for nothing, understands nothing,
cares for nothing but to be poured forth upon the sacrifice and service.
Pierce through the various incrustations which have over-laid this pure
ideal, give no heed to the effect of Western influence and example, and
you come upon this feeling, however expressed or unexpressed, at the
very back of all--the instinct that recognises and responds to the call
to sacrifice, and does not understand its absence in the lives of those
who profess to follow the Crucified. Who, to whom this ideal is indeed
"The Gleam," that draws and ever draws the soul to passionate
allegiance, can fail to find in the Indian nature at its truest and
finest that kinship of spirit which knits hearts together? "And it came
to pass when he had made an end of speaking, that the soul of Jonathan
was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own
soul": this tells it all. The spring of heart to heart that we call
affinity, the knitting no hand can ever afterward unravel--these
experiences have been granted to us all through our work together, and
we thank God for it.

Ponnamal's work lies chiefly among the convert-nurses and the babies.
She has charge of the nurseries and of the food arrangements, so
intricate and difficult to the mere lay mind; she trains her workers to
thoroughness and earnestness, and by force of example seems to create