ia
(though nothing of meanness; on the contrary, everything is marked with
a dignified simplicity). I suspect the informant never was at Lord
Hastings's table, or he could have not been guilty of such
misrepresentation. Lord Hastings's table costs more in one day than
Brother Marshman's in ten.

"The following statement may explain the whole business of Brother
Marshman's furniture, etc., which you have all been so puzzled to
account for, and have certainly accounted for in a way that is not the
true one. We have, you know, a very large school, perhaps the largest
in India. In this school are children of persons of the first rank in
the country. The parents or guardians of these children frequently
call at the Mission-house, and common propriety requires that they
should be respectfully received, and invited to take a breakfast or
dinner, and sometimes to continue there a day or two. It is natural
that persons who visit the Mission-house upon business superintended by
Brother Marshman should be entertained at his house rather than
elsewhere. Till within the last four or five years we had no
particular arrangement for the accommodation of visitors who came to
see us; but as those who visited us on business were entertained at
Brother Marshman's, it appeared to be the most eligible method to
provide for the entertainment of other visitors there also; but at that
time Brother Marshman had not a decent table for persons of the above
description to sit down to. We, therefore, voted him a sum to enable
him to provide such articles as were necessary to entertain them with
decency; and I am not aware that he has been profuse, or that he has
provided anything not called for by the rules of propriety. I have no
doubt but Brother Ward can enumerate and describe all these articles of
furniture. It is, however, evident that you must be very imperfect
judges of their necessity, unless you could at the same time form a
just estimate of the circumstances in which we stand. It ought also to
be considered that all these articles are public property, and always
convertible into their full value in cash. I hope, however, that
things are not yet come to that pass, that a man who, with his wife,
has for nineteen or twenty years laboured night and day for the
mission, who by their labour disinterestedly contribute between 2000
and 3000 rupees monthly to it, and who have made sacrifices which, if
others have not seen, Brother Ward