ccupy your most
precious time and your most anxious solicitude. Do not be content with
acquiring this language superficially, but make it your own, root and
branch. To become fluent in it, you must attentivly listen, with
prying curiosity, into the forms of speech, the construction and accent
of the natives. Here all the imitative powers are wanted; yet these
powers and this attention, without continued effort to use all you
acquire, and as fast as you acquire it, will be comparatively of little
use.

"5. As soon as you shall feel your ground well in this language you may
compose a grammar, and also send us some Scripture tract, for printing;
small and plain; simple Christian instruction, and Gospel invitation,
without any thing that can irritate the most superstitious mind.

"6. We would recommend you to begin the translation of the Gospel of
Mark as soon as possible, as one of the best and most certain ways of
acquiring the language. This translation will of course be revised
again and again. In these revisions you will be very careful
respecting the idiom and construction, that they be really Burman, and
not English. Let your instructor be well acquainted with the language,
and try every word of importance, in every way you can, before it be
admitted...

"In prosecuting this work, there are two things to which especially we
would call your very close attention, viz. the strictest and most rigid
economy, and the cultivation of brotherly love.

"Remember, that the money which you will expend is neither ours nor
yours, for it has been consecrated to God; and every unnecessary
expenditure will be robbing God, and appropriating to unnecessary
secular uses what is sacred, and consecrated to Christ and his cause.
In building, especially, remember that you are poor men, and have
chosen a life of poverty and self-denial, with Christ and his
missionary servants. If another person is profuse in expenditure, the
consequence is small, because his property would perhaps fall into
hands where it might be devoted to the purposes of iniquity; but
missionary funds are in their very circumstances the most sacred and
important of any thing of this nature on earth. We say not this,
Brethren, because we suspect you, or any of our partners in labour; but
we perceive that when you have done all, the Rangoon mission will lie
heavy upon the Missionary Funds, and the field of exertion is very
wide."

Felix Carey was a medical mi