late-bed time, and I am surrounded by five Karen
women, three of whom arrived this afternoon from the jungle, after being
separated from us nearly five months by the heavy rains. The Karens are
beginning to come to us in companies; and with them, and our scholars in
the town, and the care of my darling boy, you will scarce think I have
much leisure for letter-writing."

Thus she toiled on, cheered by the consciousness that she was in the
path of duty: that her husband if permitted from his home in heaven to
watch over the spot he most loved on earth, would smile approvingly on
her labors; and encouraged by the affection of many of the disciples,
and the interest awakened among some new inquirers.

But it cannot be doubted that her trials were at least equal to her
encouragements. Long before, Mr. Boardman had written, "the thoughts of
this people," the Burmans, "run in channels entirely different from
ours. Their whole system has a tendency to cramp their intellectual
powers;--professedly divine in its origin, it demands credence without
evidence; it spurns improvement, disdains the suggestions of experience,
and flatly denies the testimony of the external senses. What a man sees
with his own eyes he is not to believe, because his Scriptures teach
otherwise.... There is no fellowship of thought between them and us on
any subject. Everything appears to them in a different light, they
attribute everything to a different cause, seek a remedy of evils from a
different quarter, and entertain, in fine, a set of thoughts and
imaginations totally different from ours." The Karens, it is true, had
fewer prejudices to be eradicated, and more easily sympathized with the
missionaries than the haughty, self-sufficient Burmans; but then their
very docility made them liable to another danger, that of holding their
new faith lightly, and parting with it easily. All these difficulties
sometimes so pressed upon Mrs. Boardman, that she was ready to say, "It
requires the patience of a Job and the wisdom of a Solomon to get on
with this people; much as I love them, and good as I think they are."
She then spoke of the _converts_; in whom was implanted that grace
which, so far as it operates on the heart, makes all, in a sense, _one_
in Christ Jesus; how then must she have been tried with those who would
not repent and embrace the only principles that could give her the least
fellowship or communion with them?

_Jan. 19, 1832._--Mrs. Boardma