r seven months. These are of little account. The
danger of which I speak is, the pernicious influence to which for that
length of time they are exposed. This is an objection which, though not
of sufficient weight in itself to determine one's course, may yet come
in as an item in making up the account.

On the supposition that children are sent, they go of course without
their parents. In some cases the protector to whom they are to be
intrusted may not be altogether such as could be desired. Even in case a
parent accompanies the children, he will find it a great task to keep
them from many pernicious influences during a long voyage. In very many
ships they will hear more or less profane, low, vulgar and infamous
language, both in conversation and in song. They will see exhibitions of
anger, impatience, fretfulness, boisterous laughter and giddy mirth.
They will see the holy Sabbath made a day of business, or at best a day
of lounging and idleness. They will be likely on the one hand to
receive such caresses as to make them vain and self-important; or, on
the other hand, to be so treated as to chafe their tempers and injure
their dispositions. In short, for six or seven months, they must be
thrown into a strange family; into a family confined to the narrow
limits of a ship's cabin and deck; into a family over which the parent
of the children has no control; into a family, too, composed of the
variety of character and disposition of those who sail on the ocean.
Thus circumstanced, children inevitably suffer much, even under the
vigilant eye of a parent, and still more would they suffer under any eye
less careful and attentive. This moral danger to which children are
exposed at sea, though not an objection of the strongest kind, is yet an
item worthy of being noticed. Missionaries think of it when sending away
their children, and dread it far more than tempests and tornadoes.

Another objection is, that _no adequate provision is made for the
support and education of missionaries' children_, if sent to a Christian
land. The provision that is made by the American Board of Commissioners
is $60 a year for a boy till he is eighteen years of age, and $50 a
year for a girl during the same period. Now, every one sees that this is
a sum scarcely sufficient to furnish them with food and clothing,
without provision for sickness or means of education. It may be said,
that they must be thrown much upon the spontaneous charities of
Chr