tic spectators; the sickening blaze of the sun and the reflected
glare from the houses; the blinding dust in your eyes, and the queer
feel of ashes down your neck; above all, the sense that this sort of
thing does no manner of good--for it is not persecution (nothing so
heroic), and it will not end in martyrdom (no such honours come our
way)--all this row, and all these feelings, one on the top of the other,
combine to make mobbing less interesting than might be expected. You
hold on, and look up for patience and good nature and such like common
graces, and you pray that you may not be down with fever to-morrow--for
fever has a way of stopping work--and you get out of it all, as quickly
as you can, without showing undue hurry. And then, though little they
know it, you go and get a fresh baptism of love for them all.

But how delighted one would be to go through such unromantic trifles
every hour of every day, if only at the end one could get into the
hearts and the homes of the people. As it is, just now, our grief is
that we cannot. We know of several who want us, and we are shut out from
them.

One is a young wife, who saw us one day by the waterside, and asked us
to come and teach her. For doing this she was publicly beaten that
evening in the open street, by a man, before men; so, for fear of what
they would do to her, we dare not go near the house. Another is a widow
who has spent all her fortune in building a rest-house for the Brahmans,
and who has not found Rest. She listened once, too earnestly; she has
not been allowed to listen again. Oh, how that tiger bites!

Next door to her is a child we have prayed for for three years. She was
a loving, clinging child when I knew her then, little Gold, with the
earnest eyes. That last day I saw her, she put her hands into mine,
caring nothing for defilement; "Are we not one Caste?" she said. I did
not know it was the last time I should see her; that the next time when
I spoke to her I should only see her shadow in the dark; and one wishes
now one had known--how much one would have said! But the house was open
then, and all the houses were. Then the first girl convert, after
bravely witnessing at home, took her stand as a Christian. Her Caste
people burned down the little Mission school--a boys' school--and
chalked up their sentiments on the charred walls. They burned down the
Bible-woman's house and a school sixteen miles away; and the countryside
closed, every town an