me there. Being asked to close the
forenoon meeting with prayer and the benediction, I offered prayer, and
then began, "May the love of God the Father--" but not another word
would come in English; everything was blank except the words in Aniwan,
for I had long begun to _think_ in the Native tongue, and after a dead
pause, and a painful silence, I had to wind up with a simple "Amen!" I
sat down wet with perspiration. It might have been wiser, as the
Chairman afterwards suggested, to have given them the blessing in
Aniwan, but I feared to set them alaughing by so strange a manifestation
of the "tongues." Worst of all, it had been announced that I was to
address them in the afternoon; but who would come to hear a Missionary
that stuck in the benediction? The event had its semi-comical aspect,
but it sent me to my knees during the interval in a very fever of
prayerful anxiety. A vast audience assembled, and if the Lord ever
manifestly used me in interesting His people in Missions, it was
certainly then and there. As I sat down, a devoted Free Church Elder
from Glasgow handed me his card, with "I. O. U. L100." This was my first
donation of a hundred pounds, and my heart was greatly cheered. I
praised the Lord, and warmly thanked His servant. A Something kept
sounding these words in my ears, "My thoughts are not as your thoughts;"
and also, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain thee."

During my address at that meeting three colored girls, not unlike our
Island girls, sat near the platform, and eagerly listened to me. At the
close, the youngest, apparently about twelve years of age, rose,
salaamed to me in Indian fashion, took four silver bangles from her arm,
and presented them to me, saying, "Padre, I want to take shares in your
Mission Ship by these bangles, for I have no money, and may the Lord
ever bless you!"

I replied, "Thank you, my dear child; I will not take your bangles, but
Jesus will accept your offering, and bless and reward you all the same."

As she still held them up to me, saying, "Padre, do receive them from
me, and may God ever bless you!" a lady, who had been seated beside her,
came up to me, and said, "Please, do take them, or the dear girl will
break her heart. She has offered them up to Jesus for your Mission
Ship."

I afterwards learned that the girls were orphans, whose parents died in
the famine; that the lady and her sister, daughters of a Missionary, had
adopted them to be tra