e Door

"When any person is known to be considering the
new Religion, all his relations and acquaintances
rise _en masse_; _so that to get a new convert is
like pulling out the eye-tooth of a live tiger_."
_Adoniram Judson, Burmah._

EVERY missionary who has despaired of hitting upon an illustration vivid
enough to show you what the work is really like among Mohammedans and
Caste Hindus will appreciate this simile. After our return from Dohnavur
we found that the long-closed villages of this eastern countryside had
opened again, and the people were willing to allow us to teach the girls
and women. For two months this lasted, and then three boys, belonging to
three different Castes, became known as inquirers. Instantly the news
spread through all the villages. It was in vain we told them we
(women-workers) had never once even seen the boys, had in no way
influenced them; the people held to it that, personally responsible or
not, the book we taught to the girls was the same those boys had read
(an undeniable fact); that its poison entered through the eyes, ascended
to the brain, descended to the heart, and then drew the reader out of
his Caste and his religion; and that therefore we could not be tolerated
in the streets or in the houses any more, and so we were turned out.

[Illustration: "It took me such a long time to learn to draw nicely,"
said Victory when she saw this photo; "I used to go to the Brahman
street every morning and practise it there." A design is drawn with a
piece of chalk on the ground in front of every house each morning during
part of December and January, in memory of a goddess who used to amuse
herself by drawing these patterns and planting flowers in them. All
sorts of geometrical designs are drawn by the women and children, and
the regular morning drawing is part of the day's work.]

In one village where many of the relations of one of these three lads
live, the tiger growled considerably. One furious old dame called us
"Child-snatchers and Powder-mongers," and white snakes of the cobra
species, and a particular genus of lizard, which when stamped upon
merely wriggles, and cannot be persuaded to die (this applied to our
persistence in evil), and a great many other things. The women stood out
in the street in defiant groups and would not let us near enough to
explain. The men sat on the verandah fronts and smiled, bland