ion of knowledge. Their fathers and mothers cannot devote so
much of their time to their children, as to keep their minds
industriously employed in the pursuit of knowledge; and as to schools,
most missions are not thus favored. Missionaries then, if they keep
their children on heathen ground, run the risk of seeing them grow up
in habits of inactivity and indolence. This, if a risk, is a fearful
one; for missionaries ardently wish their children to be useful when
they themselves shall be dead. But indolence and usefulness are the
opposites of each other; whereas indolence and vice are closely allied.
To prevent then this deadly evil, of having their children grow up in
indolent habits, is one of the strong reasons why missionaries resort to
the heart-rending alternative of parting with their children, with but
little probability of seeing them again this side the grave.

Again, as the state of things now is, the children of missionaries, if
kept on heathen ground, can possess but _very limited advantages for
mental improvement_. Their mothers cannot be depended upon to instruct
them much in literature and the sciences. Under the influence of a
withering atmosphere, often sick, with no help in many countries in
their domestic affairs but untrusty domestics, and often with none at
all, and obliged to attend to many calls from the people, or run the
risk of giving offence, how can they be expected to find much time and
strength for disciplining the minds of their children, and storing them
with useful knowledge? They may succeed in giving them an acquaintance
with the branches of common education, but to carry them into the higher
branches is, as a general remark, entirely out of the question. Such a
task is by no means expected of a minister's wife at home, much less can
it be expected of the wife of a missionary.

Neither can their fathers be depended upon to give a thorough education.
Ministers at home would find it a great encroachment upon their time to
spend several hours each day in instructing their own children; but they
have _vastly_ more leisure to do so than the foreign missionary. To
instruct a class of three or four requires the same apparatus, the same
preparation in the teacher, and the same number of hours each day, as
would be required for a class of thirty or forty. But should a
missionary devote such an amount of time and means to his own family, it
must be to the neglect of other labor. The most econo