ed flowers
and with trees laden with fine fruits.
In this pretty cottage, the infant Maria was lulled in her mother's arms
to sleep, and often the tears rolling down the mother's cheeks, fell upon
the baby's fair face. Why did the mother weep? It was for her husband she
wept. He was not dead, but he was in prison. He was a missionary, and the
king of Ava had imprisoned him in the midst of the great city. Was his
wife left all alone with her babe in her cottage? No, there were two
little Burmese girls there. They were the children of heathen parents,
and they had been received by the kind lady into her cottage, and now
they were learning to worship God. Their new names were, Mary, and Abby.
There were also two men servants, of dark complexion, dressed in white
cotton, and wearing turbans. It was a sorrowful little household, because
the master of the family was absent, because he was in distress, and his
life was in danger. Every day his fond wife visited him in his prison.
She left her babe under the care of Mary, and set out with a little
basket in her hand. After walking two miles through the streets of Ava,
she came to some high walls--she knocked at the gate--a stern-looking
man opened it. The lady, passing through the gates, entered a court. In
one corner of the court, there was a little shed made of bamboos, and
near it, upon a mat, eat a pale, and sorrowful man. His countenance
brightens when he perceives the lady enter. She refreshes him with the
nice food she has brought in her basket, and comforts him with sweet and
heavenly words:--then hastens to return to her babe. As soon as she
enters her cottage, she sinks back, half fainting, in her rocking-chair,
while she folds again her little darling in her arms. Happy babe! thy
parents are suffering for Jesus--and they are blessed of the Lord, and
their baby with them.
Greater sorrows still, soon befell the little family. One day, a
messenger came to the cottage, with the sad tidings that the bamboo hut
had been torn down, the mat, and pillow taken away, and the prisoner,
laden with chains, thrust into the inner prison. The loving wife hastened
to the governor of the city to ask for mercy; but she could obtain none,
only she was permitted to see her husband. And _what_ a sight! He was
shut up in a room with a hundred men, and without a _window!!_ Though the
weather was hot no breath of air reached the poor prisoners, but through
the cracks in the boards. No wond
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