st of her
life. Nor was Carey a better indigo-planter than a shoe-maker; the
profits of the factory dwindled, and the buildings fell into ruin; the
seasons were bad, and in three years Mr. Udney found himself obliged to
give up the speculation; but in the meantime, though Carey had not been
able to produce much effect on the natives, he had completed the
preparation of the implement to which he most trusted for his work, a
translation of the New Testament; and, moreover, had been presented by
good Mr. Udney with a wooden printing-press with Bengalee type. The
wonderful-looking thing was set up in one of the side rooms at the
factory, and was supposed by the natives to be the idol of the Europeans!

In the meantime he opened a school, and preached to the natives in all
the villages round, but without making much, if any, impression; indeed
he was so disheartened, that he did not even teach his own children. The
chief benefit of his residence in India was at present the example he
set, and the letters he sent home, which bore in on the minds of others
the necessities of their brethren in the East, and brought aid in
subscriptions and, what was still more needed, men.

In 1799, four members of the Baptist communion offered themselves to go
out as missionaries to India, and two of these were men who left most
important traces behind them: William Ward, who had been a printer and
editor of a newspaper at Derby, and had seen Mr. Carey before his going
out to India, and Joshua Marshman. This latter was the person who, above
all others, gave the struggling mission the strength, consistency, and
prudence which it wanted. The descendant of an old Puritan officer on
the one side, and of Huguenot refugees on the other, he was brought up in
strict Baptist principles by his father, who was one of the cloth weavers
then inhabiting Wiltshire in great numbers. As a child, he was
passionately fond of reading, and his huge appetite for books and great
memory made him a wonder in his village. A London bookseller, who was
visiting the place, heard of this clever lad, and took him into his shop
as an errand boy; but Joshua found that his concern was more with the
outside of books than the inside, and came home, at the end of five
months, to his father's loom.

He was a steady lad, with no passions save for reading and quiet
heartfelt religion; but though he had never been guilty of any serious
fault, the Baptist body to which his fa