voyage of many
thousand miles, with a lady, the wife of one of our Indian missionaries,
to whom she had become attached, as her second but true mamma, and with
whose sisters I now found her. The little girl, sadly in want of a
companion this evening, was content, for lack of a better, to accept of
me as a playfellow; and she showed me all her rich eastern dresses, and
all her toys, and a very fine emerald, set in the oriental fashion,
which, when she was in full costume, sparkled from her embroidered
tiara. I found her exceedingly like little girls at home, save that she
seemed more than ordinarily observant and intelligent,--a consequence
mayhap, of that early development, physical and mental, which
characterizes her race. She submitted to me, too, when I had got very
much into her confidence, a letter she had written to her papa from
Strathpeffer, which was to be sent him by the next Indian mail. And as
it may serve to show that the style of little girls whose fathers were
fire-worshippers for three thousand years and more differs in no
perceptible quality from the style of little girls whose fathers in
considerably less than three thousand were Pagans, Papists, and
Protestants by turns, besides passing through the various intermediate
forms of belief, I must, after pledging the reader to strict secrecy,
submit it to his perusal:--

"My dearest Papa,--I hope you are quite well. I am visiting mamma at
present at Strathpeffer. She is much better now than when she was
travelling. Mamma's sisters give their love to you, and mamma, and Mr.
and Mrs. F. also. They all ask you to pray for them, and they will pray
also. There are a great many at water here for sick people to drink out
of. The smell of the water is not at all nice. I sometimes drink it.
Give my dearest love to Narsion Skishadre, and tell her that I will
write to her.--Dearest papa," etc.

It was a simple thought, which required no reach of mind whatever to
grasp,--and yet an hour spent with little Buchubai made it tell upon me
more powerfully than ever before,--that there is in reality but one
human nature on the face of the earth. Had I simply read of Buchubai
Hormazdji corresponding with her father Hormazdji Pestonji, and sending
her dear love to her old companion Narsion Skishadre, the names so
specifically different from those which we ourselves employ in
designating our country folk, would probably have led me, through a
false association, to regard the