University of 
 
 Southern Regional 
 Library Facility
 
 RING A RING OF ROSES."
 
 A JOY-SONG 
 
 FOR the quiet joy of Duty, 
 
 Praise, praise I sing, 
 
 For the commonplace and lowly, 
 But with pleasure high and holy 
 In each unromantic thing, 
 Praise, praise to Thee, my King. 
 
 For the solemn joy of Battle, 
 
 Praise, praise I sing, 
 
 For the wounds and sore distresses, 
 For the love which soothes and blesses, 
 Strength in weakness perfecting, 
 Praise, praise to Thee, my King. 
 
 For the splendid joy of Triumph, 
 
 Praise, praise I sing, 
 
 For the joy all joys excelling, 
 Passing, passing human telling, 
 Joy to see Thee conquering, 
 Praise, praise to Thee, my King.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 IS the " Beginning of a Story " never going to have a Continuation ? 
 This is the question which comes rather frequently and seems 
 to expect an answer. The answer is that we are in the middle 
 of the Continuation, and it is difficult to stop and talk about it, 
 for continuations, if they are to continue, insist upon steady work 
 rather than over-much talk. I am reading Florence Nightingale's 
 Life just now, and this sentence exactly expresses my feeling as 
 regards writing : " She cared for writing only as a means to action." 
 However, perhaps a booklet might be a means to action. With this 
 hope " The Continuation " goes out to do its work.
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TEN years ago we began the Nursery work in a little, long, low 
 mud-room, which was kitchen, food-room, night and day 
 nursery, all in one. Now we have spread into nine nurseries and 
 a kindergarten (overcrowded at the moment of writing), and are 
 in the throes of building several new cottage nurseries. Crawling 
 round the compound is a wall which, when finished, will be nearly 
 a mile long. Truly we are in the middle of the Continuation. 
 
 But to my mind the evidences to this happy fact are even more 
 discernible outside the compound than in it Ten years ago to 
 mention the Temple children was to court an incredulous smile 
 or that peculiar sort of silence which chills the very marrow in one's 
 bones. " No such children in this city," wrote a missionary of forty 
 years' experience to Mr. Walker, when, in order to collect facts for 
 me, he wrote to certain of his brethren. He also wrote to Indian 
 brethren, known to himself as men who had pierced under the surface 
 of things as few, even Indians, have ; and from that city came tidings 
 of secret marriages of young children to the gods ; and to that city 
 we traced not tens but scores of little ones, only four of whom we 
 were ever able to reach. " Have you seen the myth ? " asked another 
 missionary of one who had been staying with us at Dohnavur. 
 To him as to many another. Temple children were creations of 
 an imagination more ardent than informed. 
 
 5
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 There were, as I have told before, some who knew the truth. 
 The first two to encourage me by believing in the need to do some- 
 thing can never be forgotten in the Story of Beginnings. They were 
 Canon Margoschis of the S.P.G. and Mrs. Hayson of the American 
 Madura Mission. These two friends wrote letters that were precious 
 to me, for they too had burned over the wrong done to the children. 
 But even they could find no way to help. They had saved one 
 or two such children, but they could not suggest any way by which 
 others could be reached ; they could only cheer one on in what 
 seemed a forlorn hope. But praise God for forlorn hopes, for 
 impossibilities, for blank walls rising straight up overhead. Such 
 things are challenges. 
 
 And there were others, blessed be every one of them, who backed 
 up the new enterprise from the beginning, whose eyes once opened 
 could not be closed again. Gradually the number grew till now 
 there are few great districts in South India and few countries 
 in the world where we have not friends upon whom we can count 
 for all that friends can give ; from the first there were men in the 
 I.C.S. who knew the truth, and who cared, cared intensely some of 
 them ; for the wrong to those innocent children touched all the 
 manhood in them. The sympathy, and where it was possible, 
 co-operation, of such has always been a strength. 
 
 But there are still among us the incredulous and indifferent. 
 We are only continuing to learn ourselves and to enlighten others ; 
 we have not finished yet. As if by way of strange proof to the 
 truth of this, an A B C book, lately published in an Eastern city 
 and dedicated to a little child, has been given to me. The taste 
 of several of the pictures is questionable, but there can be no 
 question where the drawing intended to illustrate the letter N is 
 concerned. One can only believe that the woman whose work 
 this book is, is ignorant of what the word " Nautch " means, and it 
 is this ignorance which accounts for the heartless treatment of the 
 subject. "She shall have music wherever she goes," says the jingle 
 
 6
 
 What these Things mean 
 
 appended to the drawing. Yes, but what music? Verily, there is 
 need to continue to tell those who will listen what these things 
 mean. 
 
 Once, invited by a friend who knew something of the truth 
 touching these matters, I met a group of men each notable in 
 his way. Most belonged to the legal world, one to an Indian 
 Court, one to an Indian Society for the betterment of India. 
 The matter under discussion was the framing of a law to protect 
 children from wrong. Two of the ten men were in earnest, the other 
 eight enjoyed the talk preparatory and attendant upon all action in 
 India, but they saw no tremendous reason for immediate exertion of 
 any sort. The evil was decreasing : education, civilization, these 
 elevating influences would gradually and pleasantly permeate society. 
 In the meantime, we asked, what about the perishing children ? Ah, it 
 was sad, doubtless; that they should perish was indeed regrettable. 
 But after all were there many imperilled ? For his part one old gentle- 
 man doubted it, though doubtless, he added cheerfully, unaware of 
 the force of his admission, "a change in the law is much required." 
 
 Yes, it is much required ; but let it be remembered that good 
 though (we trust) the now nearly approaching change will be, it will 
 not end the evil, it will not end the need for the work we are 
 doing. No blessed full stop to this work is in view yet, nor can it 
 be till India itself in its inward parts is renewed and purified.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LIFE is a curious thing, it deals in so many and such various 
 points of view. The mere talker, the surface-skimmer, airily 
 dismisses the unpleasant. We, down in the dust of just that very 
 thing, do not find it so easy to dismiss. Here are two or three stories 
 from the last year's sheaf, for, " decreasing " or not, the thing with 
 which we have to deal continues. 
 
 A fortnight ago a post-card, scribbled all over with fine Tamil 
 writing, told of a child in danger in a town a day's journey distant 
 from Dohnavur. " Send at once, bringing only a seeley " (Tamil dress), 
 concluded the post-card, and wondering what would arrive, we sent. 
 
 Two days later a little girl of about eight, clad in our blue seeley, 
 stood shyly by the verandah of one of the nurseries. In her hand she 
 held a few cakes and three bananas. When she saw me she advanced 
 gravely, presented the eatables with dignity, then, regarding me with 
 doubtful eyes, retreated to the shelter of the good old Grannie (DeVai 
 of many a former story) who had brought her. I drew her to me, 
 got her to sit for a moment on my knee, and answer a question or 
 two, but only the child's sense of the mannerly held her from flight 
 She had evidently been schooled in proper behaviour : " I will look at 
 nothing till I have given these to Amma," she had remarked upon 
 arrival ; and now that the interview was over her one desire was to 
 disappear and study her new world from some private corner. This 
 was her short history : 
 
 Her mother, a good Hindu widow, had died in hospital, leaving her 
 
 8
 
 The Heart of a Child 
 
 and a baby brother. The boy died soon afterwards, and the hospital 
 nurse sheltered the little girl, but she had children of her own, and 
 soon passed the child on to another woman, who was not kind to her. 
 Then came the peril. A Temple woman near by noticed the well- 
 mannered child, and asked for her ; again and again she asked, and she 
 tried to attract the little girl to herself. Once the Temple woman 
 had her she would never let her go ; this was well known to the nurse. 
 Her conscience was not very keen, but an incident only a few months 
 old was still exerting its quickening influence within her, and she 
 bestirred herself, wrote the post-card to us, and co-operated earnestly 
 with Devai to get the child out of harm's way. It was not an easy 
 matter, but with us is the Lord of hosts, and the battle for the child's 
 soul was won. And so the little girl came to us, and written all over 
 the quiet little face was motherlessness. 
 
 For three days that little girl followed first Devai and then 
 one or other of the children everywhere, asking questions diligently. 
 Where was the figure of our God ? In the Temple there was a 
 golden figure, but she had seen no figure in our church, though she 
 had looked carefully for it. How then did we worship? A dear 
 little girl of nine went to Paradise the day after the little new girl 
 came, and this was an event of intense interest. Arulammal was 
 dead, and yet we said she had gone to a happy place. How could she 
 go anywhere when she was dead ? If she were alive, what part of her 
 was alive ? Why did she smile ? (the dead child's face had a tender 
 little smile, as if she had awakened to the loveliest surprise), and so 
 on. The questions were endless. 
 
 On the third day she suddenly woke to the sense of being loved. 
 I was sitting on the floor in the midst of a ring of children when I felt 
 a new little hand slipped into mine, and then suddenly the child's arms 
 were round my neck, and she hugged and kissed me as if she had 
 never hugged or kissed any one in all her life which probably she 
 hadn't ; and for the rest of the evening she clung on, breaking out 
 into kisses sometimes, and going on unmoved by the sympathetic, 
 
 9
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 delighted laughter of the other children, till her hungry little heart was 
 satisfied. " I will be good," she had whispered earnestly a little while 
 earlier to an older child ; " I will say no bad word ; I will not do any- 
 thing wrong ; I will be good." It was touching to see her eager 
 affection and to think of such a loving heart being absolutely 
 unloved for about five years. But many a child in this sorrowful world 
 has been unloved for five years. Not there lies the pathos of the story. 
 Rather in this : that a child of intelligence so keen, and a nature so 
 responsive to goodness, had so narrowly missed a fate darker and 
 more cruel than the Christian imagination can conceive. We may 
 try to think of such a one being trained day by day to deliberate 
 wickedness, trained till it chooses and revels in the bad, perverted at 
 the very spring of being ; but our thoughts recoil from following far 
 along that miry road. This, this is the tragedy of these children's 
 lives. Not the possible suffering some of them do not suffer at all ; 
 not the starvation where all true affection is concerned a child may 
 grow accustomed to starvation. The shame that burns, the wrong 
 that stings us as we are forced to regard it, is this awful perversion of 
 sweet to bitter, pure to vile, this deliberate defacement of the Lord's 
 image in the soul of an innocent child. 
 
 The incident which was conducive to this little girl's emancipa- 
 tion is worth telling. Will any mother oj young children read it 
 unmoved ? 
 
 A year ago, when the heat of March lay over the plains, a Hindu 
 husband left his wife for a visit to Ceylon. He never returned. 
 She had no idea whether he had died or deserted her. She and her 
 little daughter lived on for awhile in the family house with parents-in- 
 law and sisters-in-law, an unwelcome guest now. Then her baby 
 was born, and still the father stayed away. So the parents-in-law 
 sent her back to her mother in disgust, for this second baby was 
 a girl. 
 
 Then the mother and daughter and the two little ones, following 
 a fashion of some castes, went on pilgrimage, but the poor young 
 
 10
 
 Tke Mother s Cry 
 
 wife became thinner and thinner, and at last, when they reached the 
 town where the great Saivite Temple stands, she gave up the struggle 
 to nurse her baby ; she could no longer, she was too weak. And yet, 
 though all round her were houses where the little one would have 
 been welcome, and she too for its sake, she never went near them, 
 She knew enough to know the iniquity behind those open doors. 
 She searched till she found one whom she thought she could trust, 
 and she laid the little babe in her arms : " See, she is dying. I 
 cannot bear to see her die. Take her ; perhaps she will live if you take 
 her. Only promise you will never, never give her to the Temple." 
 Not content with the verbal promise, she caused a declaration to be 
 written and signed by the hospital nurse, in which she promised to 
 care for the child as if she were her own, and never to give her to 
 evil. Then having done all she could to preserve her child's life and 
 protect her from harm, and being bound by her vow to go on, the 
 pilgrim mother took her other little daughter's hand, and went on her 
 weary way, content that she had saved her babe. The hospital nurse 
 kept the little one for a month, then sold it to the Temple. 
 
 But the mother's cry had reached the open ear of God, and He, 
 Whose tender mercies are over all His works, regarded it. One of 
 our people heard of what had happened and wrote to us. Quickly 
 old Devai rose and went. She arrived at the nurse's house next day, 
 and finding the baby had really gone, and knowing full well the all 
 but impossibility of getting it back again (for once a Temple woman 
 has got a child, be it old or young, she holds to it with both her 
 hands and all her might ; or as it sometimes seems, the dark and 
 awful Power to which it is to be afterwards dedicated even then lays 
 hands upon it and grips it with a grip no human force can loosen), 
 she was much tempted to fear lest her journey should be in vain ; 
 but round about her was that mystic vital thing, the sense of being 
 prayed for ; courageous in the consciousness of it, DeVai went 
 forward. 
 
 She found the house in an upset condition. The nurse's son, a 
 
 ii
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 student at a mission college, had just returned home and was indig- 
 nant at what his mother had done education helped here. He 
 joined DeVai in the protest, and together the allies brought such 
 pressure to bear upon the Temple woman that she was forced to give 
 the baby up. A day later she was safe in the Dohnavur nursery. 
 
 But such help as that young student gave is exceptional. When 
 Temple Service versus Christianity is in question, there is little doubt 
 as to which would be the choice of the greater number. " I would 
 rather my daughter were a Temple girl than a Christian," was the 
 open avowal of a prominent educated Hindu gentleman not long ago 
 to one of India's Christian Governors. It is true there are exceptional 
 men, and every now and then the Press voices an outcry against the 
 iniquity, but the spirit behind that iniquity waits in silence, biding his 
 time. Other interests fill the columns of our daily papers, other 
 topics supply inspiration to eloquent orators, and the traffic in 
 children goes on. 
 
 But the prestige attached to the profession accounts for one of 
 our greatest difficulties in saving the children. Indirectly prestige 
 leads to wealth. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty rupees 
 was the price paid within the last few weeks to a young Temple 
 woman who played and sang at a Hindu wedding in a Brahman's 
 house in a South Indian city ; so that the Temple women have it in 
 their power to make very large offers for desirable children. This, 
 supplemented by the influence of a depraved public opinion, accounts 
 for the fact that there are never wanting children to " continue the 
 succession." Still, as there is a limit to the number of available 
 children apart from those who are kidnapped, every one saved 
 means one less from the count, and thus apart from the indirect 
 influence this work, as we know, exerts against the traffic, and apart 
 from the preciousness of each little saved child, there is a satis- 
 faction in helping to cut off the supply. May the day soon come 
 when God Himself, in anoutflash of white holiness, will deal directly 
 with the demand. 
 
 12
 
 A Rescue 
 
 This ease of circumstances where the more notable at least of the 
 Temple women are concerned leads straight, as we have said, to a 
 practical difficulty. Among the very little people, whom we call the 
 Teddies, because they are so exactly like young delightful Teddy 
 bears, is a small, creamy-brown person with large observing eyes. 
 Her story illustrates this : 
 
 Some nine or ten months ago her mother, a widow, was attracted 
 and tempted by the offer of a considerable sum of money for her six 
 months old baby, and the usual promise of a small but sufficient 
 endowment of land to be settled on the child if she were given up to 
 be trained by a certain Temple woman in the service of the god 
 inhabiting the nearest Temple to Dohnavur, the Temple with double 
 walls and, for a country town, large establishment. The mother was 
 flattered ; that her child should be singled out by the favour of the 
 god set upon her seemed to her something pleasant, and public 
 opinion all round her said so too. So she went to the Temple 
 woman's house, intending to give her the little babe then and there. 
 The Temple woman, however, was away at a distant festival and the 
 mother returned home. Once again she received the offer so tempting 
 to all that was unmotherly in her, and, alas ! there seems to have 
 been much. Again her small world applauded and advised, and 
 again she set out for the Temple woman's house. But Another 
 had set His favour upon that little child. Once more the Temple 
 woman was from home and the mother waited. While she was 
 waiting, our Hindu carpenters, who lived in that town, heard of her. 
 They told her of us, and, tired of waiting for the Temple woman 
 and hopeful that we, being foreigners and apparently partial to this 
 particular type of child, would rise still higher in our offer, the mother 
 came to us. 
 
 I was in hospital with Ponnamal at the time, and could only 
 write, " Try to hold her if you can." She had sore eyes, fortunately, 
 and they required treatment badly ; but something stronger than 
 her faith in our medicines and desire for cure was required, and 
 
 13
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 often she got impatient, and all but went. Perhaps it was prayer 
 from the ends of the earth which kept her, for she ended in settling 
 down to wait. 
 
 When I returned and saw the baby and heard her story I was 
 perplexed. The little thing was most evidently desirable ; we had 
 refused several children because of the exorbitant demands made 
 by their unnatural guardians, and those children had at once been 
 absorbed by the neighbouring Temple. It was too impossible to 
 send another there, and yet what the mother asked was almost 
 equally impossible. I told her I must wait till my God told me 
 clearly what to do. She waited a day or two longer, awed by the 
 evidence apprehended even by her, that a Being invisible but real 
 was in charge at Dohnavur. 
 
 On the third day directions as to what to do came, as I believed, 
 to me. I acted upon them, and she utterly refused to listen to such a 
 proposal as I felt free to make her. Then I told her what our God, 
 the righteous God, would assuredly do if she sacrificed her innocent 
 child. She departed in cold scorn, and we tightened our hold upon 
 that little child. 
 
 Next day the mother returned. There was a kind of dread on 
 her face : " I had to come back," she said. " What you told me your 
 God would do He has already begun to do : I fear what He will 
 further do." That day the papers were signed ; the child was ours. 
 
 And such a child ! As we look at her we often realize what a 
 little treasure she is, and hold her with a sort of thrill of exultation 
 in the triumph of our God. She is an interesting child apart from 
 the interest of her story, for she is of an adventurous and most 
 affectionate spirit ; a baby of the sort no heart can refuse. She walks 
 in at every one's door and just takes possession. 
 
 This Teddy in a temper is a pathetic object. One day I saw her 
 toddling rapidly across some uneven ground to get to me (for Sitties 
 and Ammal alike are the very joy of her heart). She had a rag in 
 her hand picked up on her way, and this she waved as a flag of truce,
 
 The Teddy 
 
 all but tumbling over as she held it a little too far out for her still 
 uncertain balance. Just then the small helping nurse descried her, 
 and made for her with speed. But the Teddies can discriminate. 
 They put small helping nurses on one platform and proper nurse 
 Accals on quite another ; on still another are perched their beloved 
 Sitties and Ammal. This Teddy then discriminated. " Oh, it's only 
 a small helping Accal," she must have remarked to herself, for she 
 proceeded in my direction as fast as her fat legs could carry her. 
 But the helping nurse, though small, was bigger than the Teddy. 
 She overtook her and apparently suggested a return to the nursery, 
 for I saw the Teddy suddenly sit down. The ground was rough and 
 it must have hurt her, but more than mere hurt of body was in the 
 howl which rose. Then the Teddy deliberately lay down on her 
 back and kicked. The small nurse tried compulsion. The kicks 
 grew frantic. By this time I was on the scene and peace speedily 
 prevailed, and the Teddy meekly trotted back. Her flag had been 
 accepted ; she felt able to overlook the tyrannous behaviour of her 
 young Accal. 
 
 Three stories ; just three out of the many we could tell, but a 
 booklet must not grow into a book, and there are dropped threads 
 which some at least will want to pick up ; so in writing as in doing, 
 we must go on.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PONNAMAL, as all who have followed us from the Beginning 
 know, is the brave and beloved chief sister of the Nurseries. 
 Ponnamal, Sellamuttu, Arulai, these three form a group by themselves, 
 and following after are a band of keen and earnest workers, Pappamal, 
 grand-daughter of the Poet whose story is told in "Overweights of 
 Joy," Rukma (Radiance), Preena (the Elf of "Things as They Are"), 
 Santha (the Mouse of " Overweights "), Lavana who, as Fawn, makes 
 a chapter in " Lotus Buds," Latha (Firefly of " Overweights " again), 
 and Preeya, a dear little person whose happy face in a picture 
 in "Lotus Buds" has won her many a friend. These and several 
 others, notably Thai, another of the Poet's grand-daughters, have 
 found their vocation on the teaching side, and little Leela, who smiles 
 from the cover of " The Beginning," is now a helper in the kinder- 
 garten, though Leela as a teacher is as yet a too comical thought. Lola, 
 her special chum, is on the nursing side, a bonnie young nurse in 
 training, whose present ambition is twofold to prove her three 
 babies the happiest and best of all the baby family, and to turn 
 up her hair in a knot ; pigtails being, according to her ideas, unsuit- 
 able for nurses in training. 
 
 This time last year Ponnamal was very ill (cancer). Her illness, 
 with occasional breaks for a few weeks at a time, lasted for the 
 greater part of the year. It was an illness full of anxiety and often 
 of keen distress, but the comforts of the Lord never failed and our 
 hearts were refreshed in the multitude of peace. 
 
 16
 
 Through the Valley 
 
 Ponnamal has been restored to us, but there were days when 
 we walked together through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a 
 familiar valley now to some of us. Her restoration or reprieve, 
 God grant that it may prove complete restoration has been one 
 of the comforts of the year. She is still, however, invalided, and 
 often in suffering, which even her brave will cannot wholly overcome. 
 
 All the Nurseries are now at Dohnavur. We found the division too 
 difficult to continue, thankful as we were for the help of it at first ; 
 but this readers of " Lotus Buds " already know. The Nurseries owe 
 more than words can say to the devotion of our dear Ponnamal, who 
 first at Neyoor and then at Dohnavur, has toiled in love that never 
 tired for the babies who are as her own to her. When she lay very 
 ill in hospital once, I asked her what she did when she could not 
 sleep. " I count up the children's ages," she said ; " I begin with 
 Edward Rajah " (so-called because of the resemblance to cheap prints 
 of that monarch), " and go up to Jullanie." x 
 
 1 To-day, October 20, 1914, as I correct the proofs for this booklet, Ponna- 
 mal lies ill in the little nursery room whose picture is in " Lotus Buds." 
 That little room, the first of all the cottage nurseries, is full of memories of 
 joys and of sorrows, and when Ponnamal could no longer bear the noise of 
 her own room, which opens off a larger nursery, she chose that room the Room 
 of Hope is its name and so we made it ready for her. For the disease has 
 returned and nothing human can be done to save her for us. She knows it, 
 knows that she has the sentence of death in herself, and yet she and we all find 
 ourselves constantly looking for the " impossible." Can it be that for the sake 
 of our sore need for there is no second Ponnamal He Who eighteen months 
 ago delivered her from so great a death will yet deliver her ? But if not, Even 
 so, Father ; for so it seemeth good in Thy sight. 
 
 But at the moment of writing, with the little nursery in view, knowing that 
 Ponnamal is waiting eagerly for the promised hour when I will go to talk 
 over things with her, knowing that I shall find her keen over every detail 
 concerning the children and the work, wise in every suggestion, just her own 
 eager loving self, it is hard to believe she may be on her way to leave us. She 
 seems so entirely alive, every faculty is as yet alive, quick and warm and vivid. 
 Her whole thought is for us, and the devouring look of love in her great dark 
 eyes when we go over to her or take one of her babies to see her is so strong, so 
 
 I7 **
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 Jullanie she starts a stream of small stories, but our little bear's 
 cub has grown into quite a decorous maiden, who learns advanced 
 lessons and uses the English language with a certain measure of 
 assurance. Jullanie has always been fairly correct, unlike Chellalu, 
 who to this day throws care to the winds and pours herself out in 
 conversation regardless of decorum as of grammar. " Amma, 
 Amma, come look ! a black one laid two white ones not an egg, a 
 rabbit. Went in there," continued the irrepressible child, pointing 
 to the inner part of the hutch, into which her imagination had pur- 
 sued the happy parent, " shut her eyes, laid a rabbit." 
 
 " But the Lizard is going on doing it. Lizard playing Monday 
 songs on Sunday," this was one Sunday afternoon when her cheerful 
 voice began to carol what I had felt bound to suggest was a Monday 
 song 
 
 The lizard runs along the ground, 
 
 And then runs up a tree, 
 It wiggle-waggles up and down 
 And then it looks at me. 
 
 And then it looks at me, 
 
 And then it looks at me, 
 
 It wiggle-waggles up and down, 
 
 And then it looks at me, 
 
 and so on to the end of a not very serious ditty. I was dragged out to 
 the nearest tree. " There ! wiggle-waggles on Sunday, going on doing 
 Monday songs ! " Bala still continues her mystic reveries, but perhaps 
 not so frequently as formerly. " The waves are like flowers. They 
 curl over like big flowers," she said once after gazing long at the sea ; 
 and then, " 1 think the sea is a Mother, she washes her children " 
 (pointing to the rocks) "all night long." Bala used to find chronology 
 a puzzling study. We have a decrepit old coolie called Abraham, and 
 one day she heard him addressed by name. " Is that Abraham ? " She 
 
 living, that we turn from the thought of parting. How can we part ? Will 
 not those to whom prayer is a vital thing, pray? 
 
 18
 
 " Very Good Sun " 
 
 was evidently surprised and somewhat disappointed. Then after a 
 moment's reflection, " And where is Isaac? " But she was young then. 
 
 Bala has always spiritual ideas ; the scampish side of her is fairly 
 well developed, but there is always the underlying spiritual, which 
 her fellow-scamps respect. They were standing in a long row on 
 the foundations of a new building one morning, waiting for the sun 
 to rise. It was a chilly morning, and they wished he would hurry 
 and began to advise him to do so. Presently Bala glanced down the 
 dancing line, " He is waiting for God to tell him to come," she 
 remarked. The line stood quiet, impressed by this remark, and the 
 sun suddenly rose. " Now He has told him to come." Then in 
 a flash her mood changed and the whole line broke into a shout and 
 danced a wild dance on the edge of the wall, " Good sun ! good 
 obedient sun ! " and they kissed their hands to him and salaamed, 
 finishing off with a disrespectful shout, " Very good sun, like great big 
 baby's ball ! " 
 
 The children are as ingenious in their iniquities as ever ; we 
 sometimes wonder if anywhere there can be such outrageous children. 
 One of our few rules is that no playthings of any sort may be taken 
 to school. One day Sella marched a little queerly in drill. She had 
 nothing in her hands, nothing in the wisp of blue tucked round her 
 waist, nothing in her hair (she has a budding pigtail now in any case, 
 and you cannot tuck away many things in pigtails). At last she 
 was stopped and called out of the line, and, adjured to confess, 
 disclosed four large seeds fitted between her five toes. It is something 
 sometimes to be barefoot. And another day Nsa Sittie, who was 
 trying to get a little quiet between a noon class and early afternoon 
 school, was stirred past endurance by what sounded like numerous 
 cats performing all at once. She called a child from the nearest 
 nursery from which the catawauling proceeded, and was told that 
 Rachel Accal had put Preetha, Sarala, Nundinie, and Manorama 
 (Puck No. 2) in the middle of the room as a punishment (corners 
 being places where much mischief may be done), because they had 
 
 19
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 gathered and eaten tamarind flowers and were likely presently to 
 have pains, and the middle of the room was a safe and easy place to 
 find them when, as was probable, they would require attention. The 
 five in the meantime were feeling well and happy, and had relieved 
 the monotony of life by holding their noses tight and then singing 
 at the tops of their voices. Chellalu and Evu have a quieter way 
 of dealing with punishments : put one or other out of her class, for 
 incorrigible idleness or any other sin, she immediately and gratefully 
 sleeps. And Nundinie (Dimples, she used to be) has a way of her 
 own which takes the sting out of admonitions : " Forgive me, Lord," 
 she said unexpectedly at the end of yesterday's prayer, "and 
 change my dear, naughty, nice disposition." 
 
 We can only console ourselves, as we meditate on these things, 
 by the remark made in a letter from a friend well acquainted with 
 the genus child, in its many varying species, and head of a great 
 Indian educational work : " I don't think yours are worse than 
 others," she said kindly, " only they let you know what is in them, 
 which ours don't always." They certainly do. 
 
 We do not belong to Government, and are therefore uninspected ; 
 but once, two years or so ago, before we had the advantage of 
 experienced help in our school, we were visited by a proper school 
 inspector. The kindergarten was respectful but perplexed. Ques- 
 tions of a sort calculated to draw the youthful mind were asked, 
 and Pappamal was a little anxious ; she knew what might happen, 
 for she had inquired once of a well-taught class, " Which pair of the 
 rabbit's legs are the longer ? " and been assured solemnly, " Those 
 which are long are longer." Her class, however, survived the ordeal, 
 and beyond being weak in sums did nothing dreadful. Preena's, which 
 contains Tara, Evu, and children of that size, sinned worst. " How 
 many lions are there in that picture ? " " Three." " And how many 
 legs have they each got ? " " Four." " Altogether how many legs 
 have the three lions got ? " The answer for a wonder was correct. 
 " Good children ! Now why have they got twelve legs ? " But this 
 
 20
 
 "What is That?" 
 
 was too much. " To walk with," was the unanimous and emphatic 
 reply. It was worse when he came to geography. This subject is 
 not usually taught to small children in India, and the inspector 
 doubted their being fit for it, so he began low : " What is that ? " 
 pointing to a lake on a raised map. " It is a lake." " What is in a 
 lake ? " The whole class gasped. Several of their elders an evening 
 or two before had looked in the microscope and seen some of the 
 inhabitants of a drop of water. There had not been time for these 
 smaller people to see the wonders, but they had been impressed and 
 perhaps a little confused by the excited descriptions of the entranced 
 observers. " I see a bell, five bells. Oh, they have tails, no, cork- 
 screws the corkscrews are shooting up now they are straight. Oh, 
 the bells are alive ! " Or still more mysterious, " Oh, a wheel ! now it's 
 whirring it's a head, no, a wheel and it's alive ! " Which did the 
 worthy inspector want, vorticella or rotifer ? Neither, apparently, for 
 when they ventured upon echoes of the above he did not seem 
 satisfied at all. " Fishes," hazarded a hopeful child, but even that 
 fell flat. Afterwards, when they were told he had wanted them to 
 say water y they gazed in mute amazement, and a " well, you can 
 never tell what is in the grown-up mind " kind of air. The inspector 
 was quite sure they were too young to learn geography. 
 
 He would have been still more firmly riveted in his ideas if he 
 had known the K.G. view of the people on the other side of the 
 world. They are much to be pitied when it rains on our side, for 
 the rain soaks through to them and wets their houses, which being 
 upside down, must be in a most uncomfortable condition when soak- 
 ing wet inside. The Sittie thus informed the matter was treated as 
 quite natural and simple began to expound things a little, but was 
 met by a discomfiting " I do not understand it in the least." For 
 there are limits to a child's power of understanding, though none 
 whatever to its powers of imagination, and blessedly, none to its 
 faith. The wise grown-up person sometimes forgets this, though all 
 day long and every day the children keep on reminding us, so that 
 we really need not forget. 
 
 21
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 Their powers of imagination : sometimes we wonder if we shall 
 ever get to the end of these quaint imaginings. Heaven is rich in 
 animal life, the donkeys are white there, and little children ride on 
 them. " And there are cats there, gold cats," this was Sarala ; and 
 later, by way of further information, " In Heaven the frogs are 
 gold." And there are pumas there, as we shall hear later. The electric 
 torch is illuminated by means of fireflies inside. Welsh mountains are 
 well-washed mountains. Manx cats suggest a new joy : " Then we 
 can put on knickers. If there is a tail it gets in the way." As to 
 matters of ordinary life, it is obvious that the sun does not really set 
 in the sea, though he appears to do so, " for if the sun did go into the 
 sea we could not bathe, the water would be too hot." This was 
 Sarala again, Pickles of "Lotus Buds," and was after all not so much 
 imagination as sensible inference ; more than one might have 
 expected from Pickles, who, as her unfortunate teacher remarks, 
 "does not value learning," by which she means lessons. A brilliant 
 suggestion whereby a Sittie might avoid going away on furlough 
 was, she might sit in a tree, up among the branches : " You can come 
 down when you are strong." The vision of a Sittie sitting patiently 
 for months up a tree, the densest shade of which is unsafe in the heat of 
 the day, was just wild enough to be pleasant. And so it is all the time ; 
 irrational, delightful, ever refreshing is the real inside mind of a child. 
 
 But it has its bewilderments. If we find ourselves puzzled at 
 times by revelation of far distances, or pulled up suddenly as we 
 knock up against some unexpected limitation, how much more must 
 the child be puzzled when she discovers the unexpected in us ; 
 fathomless knowledge is ours she knows, but sometimes undoubtedly 
 she comes across amazing ignorance. This was quite perfectly 
 expressed one day by Sella, who ran up to her Prdma Sittie holding 
 a yellow thevetia flower in her hand. " Sittie, what is the name of 
 this flower ? " But Premie Sittie had specialized upon severer things 
 than flowers, and she said, " I don't know ; ask Ammal." Whereupon 
 Sella, surprised out of her customary politeness, and gazing up 
 
 22
 
 Varatha 
 
 dauntlessly to her five-foot-seven-inches-tall Sittie, delivered her soul 
 in English : " You know all about B.A., and you don't know the 
 name of this flower ! " 
 
 But our strange way of looking at common, evident, uncontestable 
 things is the most unaccountable part of us. The big tamarind-tree, 
 for example ; we regard it chiefly as a nice, shady place where 
 children can play on the safe downstairs of the world, as it were, 
 without danger of injury to life or limb. To the children, on the 
 other hand, the tamarind is chiefly valuable because of its glorious 
 upstairs. Up among those branches are forked seats, overlooking 
 the lower sphere, and there are secret holes up there where treasures 
 can be stowed away. That, not its mere shade on the flat expanse 
 of sand below, is its chief value. And the swings : it may be all 
 very well to swing up and down in the ordinary way, but that is 
 nothing to the joys of a twirl. Twist the ropes just as tight as you 
 possibly can, your prostrate body face downwards across the seat, 
 then suddenly let the ropes unwind a dizzy spin is the result, and 
 could anything be so rapturous ? But grown-up people do not see it. 
 They think the mad spin perilous and bad for the rope, and are 
 terribly unimaginative and unsympathetic on the whole subject 
 
 But we are forgiven everything and loved notwithstanding our 
 shortcomings : " Where is Premie Sittie ? " It was Rutnie, who used 
 to be Huffs, who asked Piria Sittie the question. Piria Sittie told her 
 Premie Sittie's whereabouts, adding, " What do you want her for ? " 
 " To love her," was Rutnie's reply a rather sweet one, if you come 
 to think of it. Has not even a dull grown-up sometimes found 
 herself wanting somebody for no particular purpose but just to 
 love her? 
 
 Still, I do not want to represent the Lotus Buds as by any means 
 immaculate innocents. This, from a person called Varatha, is suffi- 
 cient, I think, to dispel any such mistaken notion. Mr. Beath, 
 Pre"mie Sittie's father, called by the children Partiya (Grandfather), 
 was with us at the time of the story, and the occasion was his kind, 
 
 23
 
 Tke Continuation of a Story 
 
 frequently pressed invitation to her to sit on his knee at tea-time. 
 She always shook her head decidedly ; she preferred her own high 
 chair. One evening, however, she relented a little. " To-morrow," 
 she remarked in Tamil, "to-morrow I will sit on your knee." 
 To-morrow came and she was reminded of her promise, but declined 
 to keep it. This was serious. Promises, even babies' promises, are 
 sacred things ; but Varatha seemed untroubled by pricks of con- 
 science, and smilingly assured us she would do it "to-morrow." 
 Next day I met her walking down the garden-walk on her way to tea. 
 " Don't forget your promise, Varatha ; you said you would sit on 
 Partiya's knee." Varatha looked up in my face, and her expression 
 was quite inscrutable. " To-morrow," she answered serenely. " I 
 said to-morrow ; this is to-day" Whether she was puzzled by the 
 changeful ways of words, or whether she was just " doing us," I 
 do not know. Naturally she never explained. 
 
 And yet there is another side to Varatha. She was nearly three 
 and a half when a little playfellow, Lulla, passed from our happy 
 play down here to the happier Play of Paradise ; but so far as we had 
 seen she had not thought much about it, just taking the event for 
 granted as a natural, and for Lulla very pleasant, thing, in the way 
 little children do so blessedly accept the happenings of life. But she 
 must have thought ; for one evening she was found running excitedly 
 among the bushes in the garden. " Sittie, Sittie, look ! " Areenie 
 Sittie stooped to the child's level and looked. There was no general 
 glory in the sky, but just where Varutha could see it a rift of sunset 
 gold had broken through, " What is it, Varutha ? " " Lulla, Heaven ! " 
 explained Varutha, sure of being understood. Thus, day by day, 
 apart from us and our clumsy ways and words, the little child is 
 taught in a speech and in a language that it can understand. 
 
 The friendships of our small children continue to be as full of 
 tragedy and comedy as ever. Tara and Evu, however, have not been 
 quite so devoted of late as they used to be. But it was some time 
 before Tara would admit the fact. She thought it too unkind. 
 
 24
 
 Tara and Evu 
 
 Once Tara broke her arm. How she managed it no one knew, 
 for she was swinging on a low swing at the time, and need not have 
 done it. However, she did it, and Evu's distress was as great as 
 Tara's. While it was being set by the village bone-setter a pro- 
 longed and painful experience (but he is clever in his way, and the 
 fracture was simple) Evu hovered round like an agitated mother 
 bird over an injured nestling. And her pride in Tara was great. 
 Tara did not cry. Months afterwards Prema Sittie broke her wrist, 
 and her subsequent heroic conduct was the talk of the family. Evu 
 alone refused to flatter. " Tara very little ; Tara not cry. Prma 
 Sittie very Goliath, why [should] she cry ? " Night and day, till Tara 
 had quite recovered, Evu was her faithful slave. If Tara woke at 
 night Evu was up in an instant she insisted on sleeping beside her 
 on my verandah, for she was " Tara's friend." The bone-setter was 
 much struck by this devotion, and he admired Evu with an admira- 
 tion second only to his feelings for Tara, " an excellent child, a child 
 of much patience," as he told her once to her face, to her undisguised 
 pleasure. " A very good man," she remarked approvingly after his 
 departure that day, and quite looked forward to his daily visits. As, 
 indeed, so did I, for that bone-setter is another Yos^pu for quaint- 
 ness. He has only one good eye the other differs in texture and 
 expression from the good one ; and this, combined with his extra- 
 ordinary collection of wrinkles, adds to his impressiveness as he 
 squats beside his patient and discourses upon his other patients. 
 " There was one, an old man of seventy, and his family called me in 
 alarm, for he had a compound fracture" (this was not the word he 
 used ; his word was really a gruesomely detailed description of the 
 appearance of the unhappy arm). " But fractures, compound fractures, 
 or any sort of fractures, are small matters to me. You lay hold of 
 the bone which sticks out, so " (illustrating with one grimy hand), "and 
 you pull, so" (and another gesture only too vivid showed it all), "and 
 then you just push and pull and push and pull till you get the jagged 
 bit in again." " Do you wash your hands before you do all this ? " 
 
 25
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 " Before? No," with a glance of pity at such simplicity. " But after- 
 wards I wash them, for they get all bloody." 
 
 They used to be in different classes, Tara and Evu ; Tara was 
 usually top of her class, and Evu bottom of hers. One day Evu got 
 to the top by accident. The question which gave her the chance of 
 her life was, " What comes out of a butterfly's egg ? " " Caterpillar," 
 said Evu, who had seen it do it, and she went up top. For weeks 
 she remained in that proud position, but only because the rest of the 
 class at that time were exceedingly slack, and not because of any 
 virtue in Evu. This easily retained pre-eminence began to have a 
 bad effect on her soul, so she was removed into Tara's class, where it 
 was not so easy to be top. 
 
 At first this plan worked well. Tara naturally was overjoyed and 
 danced about, kissing Evu at intervals in the rapture of her loving 
 little heart. Evu looked like a shy boy under these embraces, but 
 really seemed to try to rise towards Tara's heights, and by dint of 
 good fortune did actually rise. It was all Tara could do to refrain 
 herself from telling Evu the answer to such questions as would bring 
 her up farther ; once she certainly missed in order, as Preena divined, 
 to let Evu up, and as she went down herself, she turned and beamed 
 on Evu, and patted her approvingly. 
 
 But this happy state of things was short-lived. Gradually the 
 foolish pride of emulation waxed faint in Evu's breast and she sank 
 slowly, followed by Tara, who seemed to slide down on purpose. 
 One day Evu was banished to a lower class as incorrigibly idle. 
 " Never mind, Evu," Tara was overheard remarking, " I will be 
 naughty too, and then Preena Accal will turn me out too, and we will 
 both sit at the bottom and play." 
 
 This embarrassing comradeship lasted till one day when a fit of 
 more than usual impishness seized Evu, and Tara removed herself from 
 her. At present they are friendly doubtless underneath, but on the 
 surface a little cool, and their Nurse Accal, the faithful Esli, observes 
 with thankfulness that Tara does at least sometimes assert her 
 independence and refuse to follow Evu into scrapes. 
 
 26
 
 "Doing Zamination " 
 
 With the advent of two whole Sitties for the school side, things 
 have gradually grown more scholastic though not less cheerful in the 
 K.G., or rather what is now a transition school where mature people 
 of nine and ten and eleven have " zaminations " and do occasionally 
 take things seriously, as we lately unexpectedly proved. For a week 
 or so ago, when our Collector and his wife were seeing over the school 
 and nurseries, we were arrested by the extraordinary gravity of the 
 A and B classes, classes generally inclined to frivolity and by no 
 means depressed in behaviour. Not a child would speak above a 
 whisper, not one smiled. This was altogether so unlike their usual 
 school behaviour that we passed on considerably puzzled by the 
 unwonted sobriety of life in the A class-room, and inclined to 
 apologize for what we could not understand. That evening a 
 communicative group composed of A's and B's poured information 
 upon us : " We were doing Zamination " (" "^ramination " corrected 
 several at once) " and it was very difficult, and we thought we would 
 lose all our marks" (marks having superseded place in class). "And 
 how could we speak, and how could we be happy, when in each of 
 our eyes there was a tear, and we had to hold it there, like this " 
 and an eye screwed up and stiffened showed how it was accom- 
 plished. Then there was a war-whoop and a war-dance, which if only 
 he could have seen it, doubtless would have interested the kind 
 Collector Durai considerably more than did the unnaturally care- 
 weighted students. " Now play polar bear ! " and the episode ended 
 in raids and rushes, and tears held carefully in eyes were things of 
 the far past. 
 
 As in earlier days, so now, the Scriptures and hymns continue to 
 provide material for innumerable excursions into the land some of 
 us love to walk in, the land of new ideas, on the borders of the 
 children's world. One day last April it was too hot to be hungry. 
 It was holiday time, and the A's and B's had accompanied us to 
 dinner. But dinner was impossible : " That is right," remarked 
 Chellalu approvingly, as the everlasting chicken was discarded with 
 
 27
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 the impious wish that some other species of animal were obtainable, 
 " yes, that is right : food is vain. There was a prophet and the Lord 
 God told him not to eat any bread or drink any water but go straight 
 home. And he ate bread and he drank water and a lion ate him." 
 The Book of Ecclesiastes was at that time the Children's Scripture 
 Reading portion, and many were the reflections suggested by the 
 meditations of the king. " This " (the kindergarten room) " is a 
 mere henhouse, and that " (pointing out to one of the cottages) " is 
 a mere henhouse, and all here," a comprehensive sweep of the arm 
 
 included the whole compound, " is a mere henhouse. But Heaven " 
 
 Words failed her at this point and she looked up rapturously. At 
 such moments Chellalu appears what she is not, almost angelic. But 
 even Chellalu has her moments of spiritual illumination ; it was she 
 who said, speaking of Enoch, " God called him, and he went" ; and 
 it was the same mad-cap child who, in telling the story of the entry 
 into Jerusalem, thus paraphrased the words of our Lord : " If the 
 children do not sing, the stones will walk and sing to Me." 
 
 Still apropos of the vanity of earthly things was this : We may 
 not lay up treasure on earth. " All earthly things are vain ; this 
 pencil-box " (waving it) " is vain. When we die, burn it all up ! " 
 " I suggested," says the Sittie, " it would be better to leave our Bibles 
 and pencil-boxes for other children." The Scamp agreed : " Yes, for 
 the heathen children. My Bible is nicely marked, very useful for 
 heathen children." This from Chellulu, of all people, was really 
 striking. If only she lived according, what a treasure she would 
 be ! Her ideas, however, as to the way to convert the world outside 
 the compound are, it is to be feared, somewhat crude, and like most 
 of her plans, drastic. This, for example, explains her fairly lucidly : 
 " You break all the idols and then the heathen are much afraid, and 
 they say, ' Oh no ! Oh no ! we will worship the true God.' " Varied 
 by, M God will send an earth-shake in that place and break all the 
 idols very nicely, and the people [will] say, ' Oh ! oh ! we are very 
 sorry ; we won't do it any more.' " 
 
 28
 
 Blackboards and Seals 
 
 " Able from these stones to raise up children unto Abraham " was 
 the amazing sentence which riveted attention one day lately. Nesa 
 Sittie was the teacher. " Can God make anything into children ? " 
 N6sa Sittie said it was even so. Seela's eyes traversed the class- 
 room. There is a huge blackboard there, much bigger than black- 
 boards usually are. Seela fixed upon this big black thing and 
 pointing to it inquired, " God can make that blackboard a child ? ' 
 Ne"sa Sittie could only say, " Yes, if He wished to He could." But 
 Seela had found something still more unpromising, a picture of a 
 shiny seal on a slab of ice. " And the seal ? " N6sa Sittie assured 
 her He certainly could if He wished. But she was not sorry to 
 return to more ordinary subjects, for the transformation of black- 
 boards and seals into children was only too evidently being 
 visualized by at least five of the attentive six present in that 
 Bible-class, and children richly endued with a sense of the comic 
 can do terrible things when too far tried. Seela, however, reverted 
 to the subject more than once, and not long ago remarked impres- 
 sively out of school hours : " Do you know that God can make 
 blackboards and seals into children if He wishes ? " 
 
 Things on both sides the Unseen are extremely vivid. The 
 sermon one Sunday had been on David and Jonathan, and Pyarie, 
 discussing it, said she loved Jonathan best. To a suggestion that 
 she loved the Lord Jesus best she paused to consider, then con- 
 tinued, " I love the Lord Jesus much, much, much. Then I love 
 Jonathan much, next David, next Solomon. I do not love one 
 best, that is Sasu " (the Devil). The drop into Tamil, and muti- 
 lated Tamil too, for /Ysasu is the name of the person to whom 
 Pyarie had referred, tickled Sella, and she laughed. Why had 
 Pyarie dropped the "Pi"? But Pyarie had a sufficient reason: 
 her name began with Pi ; therefore she left that first syllable out 
 when speaking of the unbeloved. The two children were in Nsa 
 Sittie's room at the time and continued chattering, presently remarking, 
 in mixed Tamil and English, that they would not like to live in that 
 
 29
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 room, it had two doors, and a snake might come in by one door and 
 a robber by the other. As it happened a big lizard (bloodsucker is 
 its rather gruesome common name) had fixed upon the stone pillar 
 supporting the roof as a suitable residence, but their Sittie reminded 
 them of the One who was wherever His children were, to which 
 Sella assented, " Yes, bloodsucker stays here to bite " (a mistake, 
 the creature is innocent), " God stays to take care." A comfortable 
 view of things which satisfied them both. The direct, if abbreviated, 
 language often points a story, as when part of our Lord's temptation 
 was thus summarized : " Satan told a big lie ; he said, ' I made all 
 this ; if you bow Me I will give it to you ! ' ' And rich words come 
 to the rescue sometimes and help out the meagre store, as when Thai 
 Accal slew an insect and a small child kindly excused her : " Accal 
 does not know the preciousness of that puchie." 
 
 And the hymns. Indian children have no difficulty in under- 
 standing things spiritually, but occasionally a literal translation 
 of their thoughts, so to speak, is permitted. One evening Seela was 
 looking at a picture of a puma. She duly discovered for herself that 
 it was self-coloured, the only large cat except the lion not striped 
 like a tiger or spotted like the leopard. " Good puma," was the 
 unexpected observation, and she began to croon to herself " There 
 is a city bright," till she got to the line " spotless and stainless, 
 spotless and stainless," when she stopped to stroke the puma. 
 " Many pumas in heaven." But as usual it was Chellalu who did 
 the thing most thoroughly. The Christmas hymn was floating in 
 her head, apparently, for about Christmas time she rushed into the 
 schoolroom in blissful excitement : " Look ! oh, look ! Where a 
 mother laid her baby ! " and she held out a large green leaf, in the 
 middle of which was a small white patch, a bit of silk fluff, and out 
 of it was crawling a spider. 
 
 Spiders are a continual interest, sometimes half shuddery but 
 sometimes most comfortable. There was one who made her web 
 exactly across the one of the schoolroom windows so that the 
 
 30
 
 "Pretty Puchie ! " 
 
 children could conveniently watch her avocations. It happened 
 to be our rainy season, and regularly before rain that intelligent 
 animal used to run down her line, roll up her web into a ball and 
 tuck it under the window eave, so that it was never destroyed by 
 the rain. Trap-door spiders are among the wonders of our compound, 
 but only once have we found the silk door with its hinge complete. 
 This treasure was covered by a finger-glass in hope of protecting it, 
 but a miserable crow saw the finger-glass, upturned it, and pre- 
 sumably ate the silken door, for we never saw it again. The children's 
 delightful familiarity with living things has occasionally led into 
 peril, as when Evu brought a yellow scorpion in her half-closed little 
 hand, purring to it softly : " Pretty puchie ! " But the ablest of the 
 guardian angels was surely on duty the day the B class saw a cobra 
 for the first time. A deputation scampered across for me to come and 
 look at the marvellous snake which "stood up and made an arch"; a 
 graphic gesture showed me the spread hood and waving head, and 
 1 fled out to find a circle of admirers round a large cobra which 
 Seela, whose sympathies are as yet sadly undeveloped, was pretending 
 to hit over the head with a stick. The cobra, enraged, but mercifully 
 for the moment paralysed, perhaps by the audacity of the small 
 humans, was swaying to and fro, hood outspread, the tongue flicking 
 in and out. Blessed be the guardian angels upon whose assistance 
 we do most sincerely count, for we are very short of nurses ; but 
 blessed, most blessed, be the Lord of all the angels, Whose face 
 the good angels do ever behold on behalf of these little ones com- 
 mitted to their care.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE compound that mere but delightful henhouse has 
 grown considerably since " The Beginning " was written. It 
 includes now several acres, covered more or less, or being covered, with 
 nurseries and other scattered little buildings ; for we have no massing 
 of children together, and their free life in the good fresh air accounts, 
 we think, for much of their usually good health and riotous spirits. 
 Each cottage is surrounded by a trellis both for privacy and for 
 beauty, and the climbers, jessamine, antigone, thunbergia, morning 
 glory and other varieties of convolvulus are among the joys of the 
 children's lives. The trellises sometimes serve other uses, as, for 
 example, last Sunday, when a small girl, sent from her nursery in 
 disgrace as too tiresomely unruly (" She doesn't want to do anything 
 she ought," was the complaint), spent a solitary salutary hour in 
 searching for a disobedient jessamine. Later in the day she was over- 
 heard describing her experience : " And I could not find one. For 
 God had said to the jessamine, ' Your leaves must grow one opposite the 
 other ' ; and they did. Sometimes I found one where there was no 
 opposite leaf, but there was a little thing" (leaf bud she meant) 
 " opposite, so there had been a leaf, only it had fallen off. No, I could 
 not find one disobedient jessamine !" 
 
 These little nursery rooms are very dear to their owners. The 
 pictures, the best we can get, are possessed with a happy sense of 
 possession, and very minutely studied. The little teak wood book- 
 shelves let into the walls, the very tiles on the floor which they most 
 
 32
 
 Yostpu 
 
 diligently scrub, are their " sonthum," their own. All this helps 
 towards the family feeling which is such a marked feature of our 
 happy Dohnavur life. My fellow-workers are Sitties to them all, 
 (Sittie means mother's younger sister, which with one exception the 
 Sitties are), and the Accals are sisters in truth. Each who is fit 
 for it has charge of a nursery. Sundoshie (the young wife whose 
 people tried three times to poison her) and Esli are perhaps the only 
 two whose names would be familiar to readers of this story. But 
 among the nurses in training are those whom some will remember. 
 Karuna (the Duckling of " Things "), for example, and even little 
 Tingalu, for whom the devoted Yosepu still entertains a high regard. 
 This small person is a helper to the helping nurses a very junior 
 position, but she will rise in time. 
 
 Many have been the inquiries about the worthy Yosepu, so a word 
 about him may not be out of place. He continues entirely 
 affectionate, but has lately been considering the question of marriage, 
 and this has had a somewhat disturbing effect upon him. He has 
 become a little hazy about his duties, and sometimes forgets them. 
 But he is as interesting as ever. One day about Christmas time a 
 parcel of toys came from home, and he was in the room when they 
 were unpacked. I left the room for a moment, and when I returned 
 Yosepu was on his knees holding in his clasped hands a small black 
 furry animal. His eyes were turned devotionally up; his whole 
 expression, every wrinkle in him, was twisted into an appeal for that 
 black animal. Who could have resisted him ? I could not. So the 
 doll in pink silk has a companion now. 
 
 The monotony never too monotonous of life at Dohnavur is 
 interrupted by expeditions to the foothills on Saturday afternoons, 
 when the patient Areenie Sittie crowds herself into a bandyful of 
 children and allows herself to foe tumbled over three hot miles of 
 execrable road to the foot of our great rock. Then the bandy pours 
 out its excited contents, and everybody roams and scrambles about 
 till, too soon, it is time to return. On the way certain idols have to 
 
 33
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 be passed ; the order of the day then is for one or more small girls to 
 lay hands upon Sittie's face with an earnest, " Turn your face round, 
 Sittie ; don't look at the sad thing." Once a bandy load of children 
 passing a little idol temple began suddenly to sing ; " For God to hear 
 and not be sorry," they explained. Sometimes a break of another 
 kind occurs and we have Cooley days, when every one puts on a 
 cooley turban and does real cooley work with uncooley-like energy. 
 " Give me thirty of the children and I will get sixty cooleys' work done 
 for you," once remarked the long-tried Sellamuttu, who at that time 
 was engaged in superintending cooleys ; but we cannot always spare 
 thirty, for lessons have to be learned in the intervals of other things. 
 Still, we have cooley days frequently enough to keep the compound 
 in fairly good order, and the effect of such days upon the children is 
 excellent. And finally we still have our Coming Day Feasts, days of 
 delight to the garlanded children, who sit now not in little rows as of 
 old, but in many circles on the floor of the big Praise Room in the 
 kindergarten. 
 
 The compound, like the family, has been growing of late. A new 
 field .has been included, and our expectation is to have twelve 
 little nurseries, to be called by the names of the twelve precious 
 stones. But we cannot speak of expectations without the question 
 rising, Who is responsible for all this expenditure? So perhaps 
 it is well to say at once that no one on earth is responsible 
 for us. The C.E.Z. Keswick, Messrs. Morgan and Scott, Messrs. 
 Marshall Brothers, and our Home Secretary, Mrii treete) ^i I4igh 
 fiti'aftVQiifui'd, P as s on whatever they receive for us, but no one is 
 responsible for our supplies. And yet never once have they failed. 
 
 And again it needs to be said clearly that no one is authorized to 
 ask for money for us. We have three reasons for this decision : we 
 do not wish to risk doing others the wrong of receiving what, if we 
 had not asked for it, might have gone to them. We do not want to 
 have the responsibility of spending anything which we cannot be 
 quite sure was intended for us ; and we have found it enough to 
 
 34
 
 The Account Book 
 
 ask our Heavenly Father. That second reason may read a little 
 obscurely, but to us at least it is simple enough. Expenditure leads 
 out into expenditure ; the only expenditure, with all its outworkings, 
 for which God can be held to be responsible is that which He directs. 
 The spending of money in the first instance, therefore, is a serious 
 business, and we do not want to take to ourselves this responsibility. 
 In other words, we do not want to have more money to spend than 
 we are authorized to use. A gift given at the request of a friend 
 might or might not be His intention for us. It is conceivable, at least, 
 that it might not. He might have meant it for some one else when 
 our kind friend intercepted it. But about money unasked except in 
 prayer can there be any such doubt ? and is not all that is involved 
 in using it to open new work, or to extend old work, assured to us in 
 the initial gift which we accept as an earnest of the whole ? 
 
 So we continue as we began, asking only the One in Whose 
 hand are all supplies, and the oil in the cruse does not fail. As we 
 pour it out it comes. It is very simple but at times very awesome, 
 for it brings the Lord our Master near and causes us afresh 
 to recognize Him as practically, not just theoretically, in charge. 
 " He hath shamed me with His kindness " : the words are written 
 on the fly-leaf of my account-book, and no words could more 
 truly tell the story of the years. I have said all this before 
 elsewhere, but can it be said too often or too clearly? For the 
 age is full of question, and do not such answers as these, direct, 
 actual, supply an answer to at least one of the most persistent ? There 
 is no myth, no imagination about it : God does hear when we speak 
 to Him ; God does answer us. For money is a tangible, unmistak- 
 able thing ; you cannot act when you have not got it as you would it 
 you had it. It is not a case of "Believe that you have it, and you 
 have it " a kind of faith which has puzzled me from a child. Believe 
 it will come, yes, if you are sure your order is to go forward and buy land 
 or build buildings or save children. But woe unto you if you imagine 
 you have been told to do such things and then find the order has not 
 
 35
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 been signed above. But the sign, the very impress of the signet ring, 
 when you are inwardly assured that you will see it and do see it, 
 is a solemn thing to see ; then indeed you are silent in the Presence : 
 you can only adore. And when the blessed money comes, and you 
 handle it, you see an invisible mark upon every coin, and oh how 
 earnestly you seek for the attentive ear to catch the lightest tone of 
 that Voice which alone must direct the spending of it. 
 
 Ponnamal's great desire now is a well with a kamalai, a device 
 worked by two bullocks by which water is drawn for the watering of 
 a large field. This field she already sees converted into a flourishing 
 vegetable garden, where all the needs of the ever-growing family will 
 be met, without the present daily difficulty of sending out to search 
 the countryside for vegetables. And the teaching Sitties' castle in 
 the air is a suitable school, apart from the kindergarten, which will 
 then be left to the possession of the babies large and small. That 
 this is, and may be for some time to come, a castle in the air does 
 not trouble us at all ; for, as Mr. Benson tells us, Bishop Westcott 
 reproved the scoffer who laughed at castles in the air, by asking 
 him where else they could be built, " If they are not built in the 
 air they will be of the earth earthy." So we build ours first in 
 the air. 
 
 Thus the life that we live at Dohnavur is in the true sense of the 
 word care-less. We are not careful for the provision of our needs. 
 We are only careful lest we grieve the Spirit who directeth us, by any 
 unholiness of walk or character, or by any mistake as to His 
 purposes. We are often grateful that financial burdens are never 
 allowed to press, for of cares and anxieties of other kinds we have 
 many. Is it that our Father, knowing this, and knowing that it 
 must be so, sends our little ones (who are first of all His little ones, 
 which accounts for everything, does it not ?) their rice and curry and 
 blue seeleys and all else, as it were, apart from us and our exertions, 
 so that we have not to use our strength in wresting money from shut- 
 up purses (a thing we could never do), but in wresting souls from the 
 
 36 '
 
 The Pity of It / 
 
 grasp of the evil one, the poor little prey from the Terrible, leaving 
 to His kind attention the matter of supplies. 1 
 
 And truly few weeks pass without a fight of some kind and a 
 burden on the spirit. Sometimes the fight is of a sort that, thank 
 God, comes but rarely, when we have to live through experiences 
 which cannot wisely be written down and printed. Some things in 
 work like ours have to be locked up in silence. Sometimes, again, 
 it is just the ordinary fight, the struggle which never can grow easier 
 to save the children appointed to death. In a booklet called 
 " From Dohnavur " the story is told of such a child. Similar stories 
 are being lived out in many a house in Southern India. But the 
 end is not always as it was with that noble child ; oftener the poor 
 little crushed girl gives in. I heard of one such only last week. 
 " She is entirely changed. She fled to us twice and begged us to 
 protect her, but we could do nothing. She was seized and carried 
 off and garlanded, and the thing was done. When we saw her a few 
 weeks later, her face was evil and hard." These are the heart-breaks 
 of this life. We look at our own bright children, and they look straight 
 in our eyes as English children look ; they have not a particle of that 
 furtive, conscious expression so often seen in a land where childhood 
 ends almost as soon as it begins. We know the children through and 
 through, know their naughtiness, wilfulness ; know enough to make 
 us pray with a fervency mothers will understand, " O God, save them 
 through and through, or take them quickly to Thyself! " Know, too, 
 their innocence, dearness, lovableness ; know how straight and clear 
 they are, how responsive to the good. Many of them do truly 
 seem to turn naturally to the good, rejoicing in it, and loving it with 
 a sweet, earnest love. The Lord Jesus is real to them ; in their 
 childish way they are His little lovers. Then we think of these 
 others who might have been as they, now " evil and hard." Oh the 
 pity of it, and the shame ! 
 
 1 This was written before the War began ; we are beset by new circumstances 
 now. But even so the Covenant stands fast : " Let no anxieties fret you." 
 Mr. Arthur Way's translation of Phil. iv. 6 is a word of quietness for these 
 strange and difficult days. 
 
 37
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 , as if to accentuate it all, God seems to stoop and 
 take one of our little ones and perfect her, as if to show how 
 beautiful a thing His intention is, that we may more ardently press 
 on, and save more to become His fair handiwork in the days to come. 
 One such was Lulla, the little one who found a place in " Lotus Buds " 
 beside Dimples, who is now a kindergartener of much distinction ; but 
 Lulla is learning elsewhere. Her little life, in spite of frequent 
 illnesses, was one bright summer's day. She had a delicate infancy, 
 but seemed to be growing healthy, and we had begun to expect to 
 keep her. She was five when, as the Psalm for the day she was taken 
 puts it, the angels were given charge over her to keep her in all her 
 ways, even the new untried way which leads to Paradise : " They shall 
 bear thee in their hands" the words come to us so comfortingly 
 month by month as the day returns " that thou hurt not thy foot 
 against a stone." Even the dear little feet would be the angels' care 
 in that new journey. 
 
 Lulla was just a loving, sweet-tempered, intelligent child, prettier 
 perhaps than any other child here, for she was a beautiful north- 
 country Brahman. She delighted in her kindergarten plays and 
 lessons, and she and Dimples were inseparable, a charming little pair. 
 They had opened their affection to admit Neela, a small girl of their 
 own age, a flower-like little creature with a story behind her of battle 
 and triumph, which rejoiced our hearts every time we saw her at play 
 with the other dear little two. They were a pretty trio, " fair " as 
 the word goes in the South ; dainty, delightful little beings. 
 
 38
 
 Luila 
 
 One day it was August 15, 1912 Lulla was not very well. We 
 were not very anxious ; she had been often ill and had pulled through. 
 But she rapidly grew worse. We wired for help ; it arrived an hour too 
 late. For on the third morning a glance told us the truth. Oh the 
 pang of such a moment ! I went straight from her to Ponnamal's 
 little back room and prayed that she might be taken. It was too 
 much to see that sweet, patient child suffer as she was suffering then. 
 
 When I returned to the nursery where her Piria Sittie and 
 Ponnamal Accal were watching her, they told me she had been 
 smiling. I hardly believed it. I thought it was one of those little 
 delusions which can come at such times. But to hear a trained 
 hospital nurse, and one not given to delusions, say it, was unexpected. 
 Suddenly, as I watched, the child smiled unmistakably, a radiant, 
 eager smile, then flung her arms out and up and clapped her hands 
 just as she had often done when one of us came into the nursery. It 
 was just that, nothing else ; a gesture of quick, delighted surprise and 
 welcome. She did it again, looking up eagerly and smiling all over 
 her face ; then she turned, flung her arms round my neck, then round 
 her Sittie's, and kissed us good-bye. Ponnamal was sitting at her 
 feet and she did not seem to see her, but the good-bye to us was as 
 unmistakable as the smile. Out went her little hands again as if 
 asking to be lifted up. She seemed eager to be off, and we felt as we 
 looked, if such rapture can be granted to a child of five years old, 
 what must the rapture of the ripe saint be ? And still we watched, 
 awed. If all three of us had not seen it we should have doubted its 
 reality ; as it was we cannot doubt 
 
 Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, 
 
 Bless Thy little lamb to-night, 
 Through the darkness be Thou near me, 
 
 Keep me safe till morning light. 
 
 Through the darkness there was only another minute or two of 
 it, hardly time enough to sing, as best we could, her hymn to her, and 
 
 39
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 then that radiant, wonderful smile passed and she was gone. Gone, 
 but alive, conscious, rejoicing ; we knew it : we could not doubt it. 
 What had she seen ? Whom had she seen ? We who had watched 
 her felt as if the veil had been drawn aside : we had looked in. 
 
 Friends, shall we not continue ? Can we do otherwise than con- 
 tinue ? Could we shut our nursery doors because of inevitable 
 difficulties, and say " Enough let the Temples have the rest of the 
 children " ? We cannot say it ; we cannot imagine ourselves ever 
 saying it We must save more Lullas, more and more. Help us, 
 then, to continue.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BUT the future " What are you going to do with them all in the 
 future ? " This is the inevitable second question, and it is asked 
 sometimes with real concern, sometimes with a shade of gentle 
 reproof in it, as if the questioner almost wondered if we ever gave the 
 matter a thought, little knowing it is never far from us. Sometimes 
 it haunts us, and frightens us, and sends us in desperation to our 
 knees : " Lord, thou art Lord of the future. It cannot be too difficult 
 for Thee ! " 
 
 " She lives in a Utopia," was the encouraging remark made to one 
 of us lately at home on furlough, with regard to me and my present 
 And another, with equal knowledge of facts, rose to the cheerful 
 heights of, " I pity her, I pity her with all my heart when I think of 
 all that is before her when her children grow up ! " Neither of these 
 sanguine sympathizers nor one out of the hundred questioners has 
 any idea of how their doubts appeal to the anxious, cowardly 
 part of us, for 
 
 Far in the future 
 
 Lieth a fear, 
 
 Like a long low mist of grey, 
 
 Gath'ring to fall in a dreary rain. 
 
 Thus doth thy heart within thee complain, 
 
 And even now thou art afraid, for round ,thy dwelling 
 
 The flying winds are ever telling 
 
 Of the fear that lieth grey, 
 
 Like a gloom of brooding mist upon the way. 
 
 41
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 Thank God, there is another word waiting to be said : 
 
 But the Lord is always kind, 
 Be not blind, 
 Be not blind 
 
 To the shining of His face, 
 To the comforts of His grace; 
 Hath He ever failed thee yet? 
 Never, never ; wherefore fret ? 
 Oh, fret not thyself, nor let 
 Thy heart be troubled, 
 Neither let it be afraid. 
 
 And still another : 
 
 Near by thy footfall 
 
 Springeth a joy 
 
 Like a new-blown little flower 
 
 Growing for thee, and to make thee glad ; 
 
 Let thy countenance be no more sad, 
 
 But wake the voice of joy and health within thy dwelling, 
 
 And may thy tongue be ever telling 
 
 Not of fear that lieth grey, 
 
 But of springing flowers of joy beside thy way. 
 
 These verses express something of our feelings as we look past 
 to-day into to-morrow. It is true that to-morrow may never come, 
 but all the same it is our business to prepare for it, and one way 
 surely is to be of a grateful, hopeful spirit and to refuse to shut 
 our eyes to the blessings of to-day. He Who has been with us 
 to-day, planting flowers by our road-side, will be with us to-morrow. 
 What is now our present was once future to us. Perhaps the mists 
 we saw in the time now past, as we looked across with fearful hearts 
 into that which to-day is our present, may have watered the roots 
 of these flowers of delight. But be the worst that can be awaiting 
 us, nevertheless the Lord is kind, He has never failed us yet ; why 
 then should we fret and let our hearts be troubled ? And may we not 
 
 42
 
 Our Future 
 
 conclude that if it is right to save the children in the first instance 
 and who doubts it now? help will come when they grow up ? Will 
 not the One to Whom we always look as alone responsible, under- 
 take the future when it comes if it comes for is He not the God 
 of the future as much as of the present ? I say if it comes, for at 
 least some of us are hastening unto the Coming of the Lord in glad 
 anticipation. But if that Coming be delayed and the difficult future 
 has to be lived through, even so, need we, should we fear ? 
 
 It is worse than useless to blind our eyes to facts. The work 
 could not have been started in a more unpromising, difficult place, so 
 far as the future for the girls is concerned. Tinnevelly is the last 
 place in India where one would have chosen to start such a colony, 
 and this for reasons pressing enough to force themselves upon us. 
 But who started the work ? Who chose the place ? From the point 
 of view of the present it is perfect. The children could hardly have 
 been kept in safety had we been near a city. Surely, then, the choice 
 of place may be left in peace. The future was present to the One 
 who chose Dohnavur for us, when He chose it. 
 
 But so far, though we are now surrounded by growing up and 
 grown up girls, as well as by little children, we have not felt our need 
 of pity, for we have found very many flowers. One by one our older 
 girls have become keen and willing helpers, and some of them have 
 refused offers of marriage that they might give themselves to the 
 absorbing work of helping to care for the little ones. Years ago a 
 notable missionary in South India proposed starting something in 
 the line of a Sisterhood or a Deaconess Home, where the more 
 earnest Indian girls conscious of a vocation might find what English 
 girls can so readily find, a welcome, and shelter, and guidance. But 
 nothing of the sort in the least appealed to me. I feared anything in 
 the nature of vows, expressed or understood. Nor did India seem 
 ready for it. But some at least of our girls appear to be choosing 
 the life of freedom to attend upon the Lord without distraction. 
 When I rather pressed one lately to reconsider her decision, she 
 
 43
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 brought me I Cor. vii. 34 ; and certainly in this part of the East, as 
 things are at present, there is extraordinary force in the remark. But 
 we never let any of the girls bind herself in spirit, and the satisfactory 
 marriage of some of the earlier converts is always quotable on 
 the side of the ordinary life. So far, however, to the immense 
 help of the work, our girls have grown up to be workers, and 
 as we cannot get such help elsewhere, we can only take it as 
 another of the good gifts given to us. To have the children from the 
 earliest days surrounded by wholesome, healthy influences, and 
 brought up in absolute straightforwardness, surely this is something 
 which should help towards the difficult future. If only these little 
 ones grow up reliable and true, openings will not be difficult to find 
 for them in the great needy field of missions. As it is, letters come 
 asking for our girls, but we have none to spare as yet, for everything 
 depends upon the present training, and that is why we feel we and 
 our more earnest girls must give ourselves to it with an absorption 
 which leaves little time for anything else. 
 
 But to come to definite details : we have two sides to the work 
 as at present arranged. Some children become little helping nurses 
 as soon as they are old enough, and often, such is the pressure of 
 the work, even before. These children learn all manner of useful 
 domestic things and become invaluable workers. Their devotion to 
 the babies is beyond question, though there are occasional lapses, for 
 some have difficult characters, and the best are only human after all ; 
 and trained as they are to look upon it as the most honourable as 
 well as the happiest work, they respond by real loving service such as 
 gladdens us many a time, and hushes our fears as to the future. The 
 other children are being trained with the hope that some at least will 
 become what India so much needs evangelists, teachers, and medical 
 missionaries. We divide the children according to the ability they 
 show and according to their health and several bents. We do not 
 attempt to force all into the same groove. But all of them learn the 
 basket work which we call the Dohnavur basket work, though it is 
 
 44
 
 The Directing Presence 
 
 an adaptation from the North American Indian work. Miss Jacot of 
 London has been our kind friend in this industry, and orders are now 
 coming as quickly as they can be undertaken. The girls and older 
 children find pleasure in this work ; it fills their spare half-hours most 
 profitably, and is their gift to the Nurseries over and above the 
 strength of their life. For their free time is the evening hour : they 
 work then, and can truly feel they are giving of their own. 
 
 But look at it as we may, there is only one assurance which 
 can entirely lift off the pressure of fear for the future. It is the 
 assurance that just as the sanctifying, directing Presence of the Lord 
 fills our present, so by His grace it will be in the future. He will 
 not fail us nor forsake us. Surely if He is in charge of our family, 
 He will keep the atmosphere sweet and happy ; and He will open 
 ways by which our girls will be able to minister to the needs of this 
 great land. Only pray for us that we may be made wise to train 
 them to be soldiers. Soldiers not in name only, but in deed and in 
 truth ; women warriors ready to go to all lengths with their Leader, 
 counting not their lives dear unto them. This, nothing less, is our 
 hope and our purpose : God grant us His grace. 
 
 For always the missionary element is to the fore. The whole 
 work is saturated with it and the twenty-fourth of the month is kept 
 as Preaching-day, when a little band of girls goes out to the villages 
 near Dohnavur and an equally missionary-hearted group stay at 
 home to do the work of those who go. For nurses and teachers 
 fit into each other, and Prayer-day and holidays usually find the 
 school side much mixed up with the Nursery in helpful ministrations. 
 
 And so we go on, and must go on, in this attack upon the 
 prince of darkness. We have no desire to pile up words into 
 sensational writing, but our readers if they are to help us should 
 understand that it is a fight, and battles are not pleasant, pretty 
 things, and the glorious joy of battle is a very solemn joy. But, 
 thank God, there is inspiration and courage to be had, and that 
 without which all else fails steadfast patience:
 
 The Continuation of a Story 
 
 I have a Captain, and the heart 
 
 Of every private man 
 Has drunk in valour from his eyes 
 
 Since first the war began. 
 He is most wonderful in fight, 
 And of His scars a single sight 
 The embers of our failing might 
 
 Into a flame can fan. 
 
 I have a Guide, and in His steps 
 
 When travellers have trod, 
 Whether beneath was flinty rock 
 
 Or yielding grassy sod, 
 They cared not, but with force unspent, 
 Unmoved by pain they onward went, 
 Unstayed by pleasure still they bent 
 
 Their zealous course to God. 
 
 Only let us look long and often at the Scars, and follow hard after 
 our Guide, and then is it not certain that He will give us power over 
 all the power of the enemy, and direct our steps, and cause us to 
 walk upon our high places, even those difficult future high places that 
 we naturally fear, without stumbling. He will make room enough 
 under us for to go.
 
 pREENA AND HER CLASS
 
 THE BASKET ROOM. 
 
 In a duplicate of this room the Teddies have "lessons" every day
 
 r i fU "n u n i A 00 778 870 
 
 Copies ot the IJohnavur Books, ana an 
 
 information regarding the Fellowship, can be 
 obtained from the Home Secretary : 
 
 Miss O. GIBSON, 
 
 4, Alan Road, Wimbledon, 
 
 London, S. W. 19. 
 or from 
 
 THE SECRETARY, 
 
 Dohnavur Fellowship, 
 Dohnavur, 
 
 Tinnevelly District, 
 
 S. India. 
 
 In Ireland, Scotland. Australia, New 
 Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the 
 United States of America, friends of the work 
 act as Hon. Secretaries and sell the books. 
 Names and addresses of any of these will be 
 sent on application to either of the above. 
 
 The books are also obtainable from 
 U. S. A. : Hope Church Sunday School 
 Missionary Activities. Semple and Cote 
 Brilliante Aves., St. Louis, Mo- ; 
 
 AUSTRALIA : The Keswick Book Depot, 
 315, Collins Street, Melbourne : 
 
 G E. Heald, Esq , 18, Howard Street, 
 Perth ; 
 
 CHINA : The Fraternity Book Room, 216, 
 Nathan Rd., Kowloon, Hong Kong. 
 
 SWITZERLAND: La Maison de la Bible, 11, 
 Rue de Rive, Geneva. 
 
 and in the ordinary way through book-sellers 
 in any part of the world.