examination in Tamil, which was to test my capability in that line, and govern the mission respecting my appointment, took place a week ago yesterday. I went out to Pasumalie with Mr. Rendall to breakfast at eight A. M. After breakfast I was set to work translating Tamil into English and English into Tamil until two P. M., save an hour at noon, when I conducted a weekly prayer-meeting, and talked to the students of the seminary on the words "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." I spoke about half an hour, and succeeded much better than I expected to. Then after dinner, they put me through grammar, reading Gospels and conversation. The last I dreaded, but as it came last, they let me off easily. So I rode home with a light heart, confident that I should be accepted, as the event proved.

The

I came home from our annual meeting at Melûr this morning at three o'clock. All missionaries attend the regular mission meetings held thrice a year, in January, May, and September. So on Tuesday evening about nine o'clock, Washburn, who had come in from his place, joined me in my bullock-bandy. It was a delightful moonlight night. Indeed you cannot fancy the peculiar brilliancy of the moonlight here. . . distance is eighteen miles, and we reached Melûr about four o'clock. . . . . I awoke to find myself in one of the most beautiful regions about here, the horizon bounded by hills on all sides. All the missionaries were prompt, and we had a jolly time greeting one another. The providing for such a company was no small matter in a place where no tavern is to be had, and where little or no market is to be found. But two or three took to the church and spread their cots there,

some in the house, while Washburn and I took up our lodgings under a capacious tent which Mr. Burnell, the missionary here, uses on his tours, and which he had pitched on his ground. How I did luxuriate that night, no rocking bandy, nothing to break in upon the delicious repose but the unmerciful Mr. Burnell, who roused us out of bed by moonlight to give us a bath in his famous swimming-basin. He has built a big bathing-tub, about a third as large as Braman's,* and has had it filled from the well. It is a rare treat to plunge about in water, a thing which I have n't done since. leaving home. Such baths are common among the English, but we have only two.

It

We had our meetings in the church, and they occupied from ten o'clock to dusk, excepting dinner-time. All scattered to walk by dark. There is a famous banian-tree here, one of the largest in the country. is a splendid thing, fully coming up to my idea of such trees, except that the shoots are clustered nearer to the trunk than I had supposed. We paced it. The measurement about the outer circumference was one hundred and eighty paces, the diameter about forty. The shoots, as soon as they enter the ground, swell at the base so that they grow to look like real, independent trees, and the effect is fine. The length of the unsupported branches running horizontally outward would astonish you.

The meeting is important, as being the meeting at which the appropriations for the year are made. . But what interested me mostly was my fate. not kept long in suspense, for upon the motion of Mr.

I was

* This is a comparison which Boston boys only can be expected to understand. The basin must have been about fifteen feet square.

Rendall, I was summarily appointed to the station of Periakulam; of the position and character of the station I must speak hereafter. Thursday evening

after meeting, we all went on top the house and sang under the open sky, with the full moon looking benignantly upon us, "The Star-Spangled Banner," with all our might and main. Somebody had given us a miniature "Stars and Stripes," which Mr. Burnell waved over us. It was a stirring time. I tell you, there is no unloyal heart here.

. I enjoyed the meeting highly, and came home as I went. So I am stationed. We begin to move next week, and I expect to visit Periakulam with Mr. Noyes, who formerly had the entire field which now is divided. [This visit was immediately made, and occupied a week and a half, but I defer the narrative of it till the next chapter, in order to make the description of the place more connected. He returned to Madura, remaining there only long enough to prepare for removal, and anticipating with eagerness his establishment at a station of his own.]

[TO HORACE E. SCUDDER.]

MADURA, Feb. 6, 1862.

How many times lately I have longed to have you or anybody from home along with me. I have been off on a tour and have often been alone. Tossing about in a bandy I have ample time to think, and such jolly times as two in a cart do have. Missionaries here are fresh as boys, and the way we chat about college and seminary life would amuse you. Then there is always a comical side to bandy-travelling; the bandyman sitting cross-legged on the pole, working the bullocks with his hands, much as an artist might two

A

pianos at once, thrumming on either at will, with a querulous expostulation with them for acting badly, "Don't I give you your grass and cotton-seed? Why do you treat me so?" Thus they go on, talking to them as if they were men. Oh, it's real droll.

I have work enough before me now; a district some twenty miles in diameter put in my keeping, with the charge "Till it." I am fruitful in plans, but it is to be seen how they will result. You at home can have no conception whatever of the dismal deep into which portions of the Hindû people have sunk. The sight shocks me even to-day, and you can find no terms so expressive of your feelings as the Prophet's "Can these bones live?" People who gloat over carrion, feast on rats and vermin, and roll in filth, form the staple of our congregations, that is, our people come out of such castes. It is deplorable, and often very depressing. Extremes in society here are far greater than at home, even bringing into account Romanist Irish. I mean to aim higher, not indeed ambitiously; but I question whether we have not confined ourselves too exclusively to classes who will hear us most readily. The lowest of the low have least to lose in changing their faith.

[TO HIS SISTER.]

MADURA, Feb. 13, 1862.

. . You may believe that being so soon to have a station of my own I am full of plans as to how I shall conduct it. I am reading a little volume of Dr. Caldwell's on Tinnevelly Missions. He describes briefly but ably the field, the work, the results. It is the best description of our way of working that I have

seen. There are lots of suggestions in it. My chief task, aside from preaching to the heathen, will be to instruct the congregations. I want to have a plan by which the life of Christ shall be studied in course by all the congregations simultaneously. I mean to assign Bible lessons to the catechists, which I shall go over at the monthly meetings with them. Then they teach the same to their people. So when I visit them I shall know the lesson for the day and be ready with a talk. Systematic, progressive instruction, line upon line, precept upon precept, is what they need most emphatically. Can't you suggest some method of studying the Bible? Pray for me, that above all things the eternal welfare of the thousands under my care may lie close upon my heart, daily, hourly.