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 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/bywaysidesinindiOOfrosrich 
 
^, 
 
 ADELAIDE GAIL FROST 
 
BY WAYSIDES 
 IN INDIA 
 
 ADELAIDE GAIL FROST 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 Written for the Christian Woman's Board of Mis- 
 sions in Memory of Hattie L. Judson, Who Gave 
 Her Life for India's Starving Village People 
 
Copyrighted 1902 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Christian Woman ^s Board of Missions 
 Indianapolis^ Ind. 
 

 THE restless millions wait 
 That Light, whose dawning maketh all 
 things new. 
 Christ also waits, but men are slow and late, 
 Have we done what we could? Have I? Have 
 you? 
 A cloud of witnesses above encompass us. 
 
 We love to think of all they see and know; 
 But what of this great multitude in peril, 
 
 Who sadly wait below? 
 Oh, let this thrilling vision daily move us 
 
 To earnest prayers and deeds before unknown, 
 That souls redeemed from many lands may join us, 
 When Christ brings Home His own." 
 
By Waysides in India. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CREAK, CREAK, CREAK, went the bul- 
 lock-cart as it rolled slowly over the mili- 
 tary road between two large stations in 
 Hindustan. ''I do not understand why we are 
 riding in this vehicle over such a beautifully 
 smooth road," said a bright-faced young woman 
 who was rather restlessly changing her position 
 on the straw in the bottom of the cart. 
 
 * * But you just wait until we get onto the country 
 road," her companion replied. "You see, my dear, 
 that this road has been built pdkka (solid) so that 
 should there be a necessity of marching soldiers 
 rapidly from one military station to the other, or 
 to some point where there was mutiny or trouble, 
 it could be done. The roads leading off from this 
 to the villages are quite different, as you will see. ' ' 
 
 The bright morning sunshine filtered through 
 the tamarind trees, whose shadov»^s fell in lace-like 
 patterns on the yellow road. The tamarind with 
 its fern frond leaves was mingled with the shining 
 foliage of the pipal tree, sacred to so many mil- 
 lions of people. Ahead of them were other carts 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 and many people walking, for it was bazaar day 
 in the town of Jalalpur, toward which the village 
 folk were tending. The farmers were taking their 
 produce to market, the weavers their cloth, the 
 potter and basket maker their wares, and these 
 were to be bartered and sold in the street or by 
 the roadside. The despised cliamar, or worker in 
 leather, was passed. He carried some roughly- 
 made sandals and a bundle of ill-smelling hides. 
 
 ''Get out, low-born eater of flesh!" said a tall 
 young Hindu with the books of a writer under his 
 arm. The cliamar shrank awkwardly aside. He 
 was an out-caste and might kill and eat, while the 
 high-caste man might not do this, lest he should 
 eat his ancestors. To this high-caste Hindu there 
 was always the possibility present that the souls of 
 his great, great grandparents might have taken up 
 their separate abodes in the cow or the ugly buf- 
 falo, nibbling the short dry grass by the roadside. 
 The young man looked with disgust on the burden 
 of the chamar, who passed on muttering. An old 
 man followed the cliamar. He wore no more 
 clothes than the worker in leather; he looked no 
 cleaner. About his neck were strings of large 
 wooden beads. In his hand was the brass lota, or 
 drinking vessel, for he would not drink from the 
 cup of him of lower caste. His head was bent and 
 he was murmuring over and over again on his 
 beads, ^*Bam, Bam, Bam!'^ 
 
 ''Namaskar/' saluted the young Hindu writer, 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 bowing low before him and touching his feet with 
 his hands. 
 
 The Brahmin paused, for this scantily draped 
 individual was a holy man of the highest caste. He 
 said : ' ' I am on my way to the bazaar in Jalalpur. 
 I have visited many holy places and bathed in 
 Gunga Ji (Ganges) many times, but I have heard 
 that in Jalalpur there is a wonderful light burning 
 in the temple of Maniyadev and I am traveling 
 thither to see it.'' 
 
 ''Yes, master, it never goes out. That was a 
 true word, for there it burns day and night. ' ' 
 
 Two women, bearing baskets on their heads filled 
 with grains, went aside lest their shadows should 
 fall upon and offend the Brahmin gwu. They 
 were draped in coarse dark-red cloths partially 
 drawn over their faces. On their arms were many 
 glass bracelets, and heavy anklets were clasped 
 above their feet. It made one shudder lest they 
 be bruised by these weighty ornaments. Their 
 bright eyes were watching the cart with its load of 
 strange, kindly-looking foreign women, as they 
 walked along behind, easily balancing the baskets 
 upon their heads. A tall man in a yellow and red 
 gingham coat, with shining black hair surmounted 
 by a jaunty cap, walked along with an urban air. 
 Behind him a coolie bore a huge pack of cloth, for 
 this tall man was a cloth merchant from Ramna- 
 gar on his way to the bazaar in Jalalpur. As the 
 cart passed he dropped his yard-stick to say with 
 
8 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 low bow, ^^ Salaam, Mem Sahib, Salaam! '^ A pot- 
 ter resented the merchant's salaam, which almost 
 knocked some earthen jars from his hands. Be- 
 hind the potter trotted his wife, with three dusky- 
 jars, one upon the other, balanced upon her head. 
 There was many a woman bearing more than her 
 share of the burden, walking obediently behind 
 her lord and master, never by his side. From one 
 basket borne aloft, a little brown baby raised its 
 head showing sleepy brown eyes, as it clung to the 
 sides of the basket. There were rude bales of cot- 
 ton on other heads and carts were passed full of 
 grain bags. A child had spilled a basket of vegeta- 
 bles in the road and was being upbraided in vile 
 language by a man standing near. Another boy 
 with large white radishes in his basket was laugh- 
 ing at the scene. 
 
 The road turned off to the village whither the 
 missionaries were bound, and became very rough. 
 In the long rainy season great ruts had been cut 
 by the wide wheels of rude, native carts. These 
 were not as yet powdered to dust. The driver of 
 the cart was obliged to strike off in different direc- 
 tions across the fields to avoid the worst places. 
 It was a very slow and tiring, but comparatively 
 safe mode of locomotion. The young missionary 
 wondered if that clump of trees rising so suddenly 
 out of the brown fields embowered the village. 
 There was a gleam of white there, suggesting a 
 comfortable farm house. *'Yes, the mud huts of 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 the villages nestle there, but the white is the tem- 
 ple, and no resting place for weary tillers of the 
 soil." 'Twas thus an older missionary answered 
 her questionings. 
 
 ' ^ See that man just scratching the surface of the 
 earth with his plow," said the irrepressible new 
 missionary as they neared a man with an Indian 
 plow made of sticks with a small iron point. 
 
 Ahead of them lay the village of Bhauli, with its 
 two hundred mud and grass huts surrounding the 
 slightly more precise ones built about the court of 
 the headman. A little herd of brown children 
 flocked under the trees on the edge of the village, 
 and with large, dark eyes watched the approach of 
 the Mem Sahibs. 
 
 "Salaam, Salaam!^' chorused the boys, for they 
 remembered the kind faces that had smiled on 
 them in the town. The three missionaries, with 
 some difficulty, extricated themselves from the cart 
 and walked up the narrow roadway into the vil- 
 lage and almost straight into the headman's court. 
 Several women were seated about in the sunshine. 
 One was stirring something in a large kettle over 
 a little outdoor fireplace. Two young women were 
 grinding at the mill, and another was husking rice 
 with a long wooden pestle. A little girl was busily 
 grinding the spices for the curry on a large stone 
 with a smaller stone used for pounding. An old 
 woman was cutting up vegetables with a short 
 sickle. A little baby who had been bathed and 
 
10 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 oiled paraded his shining little brown body in the 
 sunlight, being freely and airily attired in a string 
 of beads and silvered anklets. The old woman 
 rose and said, ^' Salaam.^ ^ The younger women 
 drew their draperies shyly over their faces, for 
 modesty in India means concealing the face. The 
 more experienced visitor knew this old woman was 
 the mother of sons and these were the daughters- 
 in-law over whom she might hold sway, since her 
 own years of youthful servitude had ended. Her 
 face was not unkindly, but marks were there that 
 only the expectation of blankness coming on apace 
 ^^can leave in the faces of the old. She gave an order 
 to two of the young women, who hurried into one 
 of the houses, their anklets jingling merrily. They 
 soon reappeared with a small cot bare of bedding 
 and set it in the court as a seat for the Mem Sahibs. 
 These women had no chairs, but sat on the ground 
 or on mats; and yet, with true courtesy, knowing 
 that the habits of the foreign people were different, 
 they brought out the cot as a seat. Though rudely 
 made, with ropes woven across it, the missionaries 
 took their seats upon it with a grateful acknowl- 
 edgment. The elder lady asked them concerning 
 the welfare of the family. The mother began to 
 shake her head and answer that one of her sons 
 had gone on a long pilgrimage to Jagannath, on 
 the far east coast of India, and they had not heard 
 from him for many weeks. Another pilgrim pass- 
 ing through had seen him by the way at Kashi 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 11 
 
 (Benares). There he had spent all he had taken 
 with him in the prescribed offering to the Brah- 
 mins, and was planning to beg his way to Jagan- 
 nath, hoping to reach there for the great festival 
 when the car was drawn forth. 
 
 ''I haye no rest thinking of him," said the old 
 mother. ''Who knows what has happened to him 
 or whether with all his pilgrimages and fastings 
 and performings of puny a (acts of merit) he yet 
 lives or no ? Ah, if he dies may it be by the Ganges 
 or within the sacred enclosure of Jagannath, where 
 the gods dwell!" 
 
 A woman whose cloth was drawn over her face 
 began to wail. She was the son's wife, perhaps his 
 widow. 
 
 There was an opportunity for the missionaries 
 to speak of God's Son, who made the pilgrimage 
 from Heaven to earth to bring gifts to men, and 
 they tried to give a message of hope that would 
 reach even this case. 
 
 "It is a true word you are speaking to us," said 
 the old woman, ''it seems good to me. Ask your 
 God to bring him back. ' ' 
 
 "He is our Father, and your Father, too. You 
 €an ask Him yourself and say, ' For Jesus ' sake. ' ' ' 
 
 "Who is Jesus?" she asked, and so the conver- 
 sation went on. They brought food soon, bread 
 and sweetmeats and curds, and offered it to the 
 ladies. Bits of these were accepted, for the women 
 had, taken trouble in preparing them. The mis- 
 
12 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 sionaries were rising to go when an old woman 
 clothed in a single dingy white drapery walked in 
 without ceremony. She was very light in color 
 and her skin was creased with a thousand wrinkles. 
 She carried in her hands a gourd drinking vessel, 
 a long string of wooden beads, a pair of tongs, and 
 a small roll. She was muttering to herself with a 
 strange look in her brilliant, deep-set eyes. The 
 native women at once prostrated themselves, for 
 the newcomer had the appearance of a priestess. 
 She, however, curiously approached the Mem 
 Sahibs. 
 
 V ^^Bam, Ram," she said, as such people often say 
 the name of that god in greeting, instead of the 
 usual "Salaam.'' 
 
 "Salaam," they answered; ''where are you 
 from?" 
 
 "Gunga Ji," (the Ganges) she said, ''and I have 
 here," patting her roll, "leaves from the temple 
 under the ground at Allahabad, leaves which grew 
 in darkness, but will bring back health to the sick. 
 I have here charms of wonderful power which I 
 can impart to you, even to you, who have crossed 
 the black water. I can help you to the desire of 
 your heart." 
 
 "And are you satisfied?" asked the elder mis- 
 sionary. The women of the household drew near 
 to hear the reply. Something in the tone made 
 the old pilgrim pause in her recital. "Have you 
 lost your burden ? ' ' 
 
BY WAYSroES IN INDIA. 13 
 
 "Who are you, that you ask me these ques- 
 tions?" the pilgrim answered in most respectful 
 form. "I am returning from Gunga Ji.'^ 
 
 ''Is your heart at rest?" again questioned the 
 missionary. 
 
 A look of sadness crept over the old face as she 
 said: "I lost everything I had. The Queen of 
 Chatrapur gave me money and a new cloth, and 
 now this is all I have. I made the offerings at 
 Kashi, and then I went on to Jagannath. There 
 the priests walked over my body as they did over 
 that of other pilgrims on their way to the temple. I 
 suffered much and I got nothing— nothing at all ! " 
 
 The women of the native household said, "Alas, 
 alas!" 
 
 "And my son!" exclaimed the mother of the 
 household, "did you meet my son, who made a 
 pilgrimage there?" 
 
 ' ' There were thousands of people going there. I 
 do not know your son. Plenty were thin so their 
 bones showed, plenty were dying of fever, plenty 
 were in rags. I did not know them." 
 
 "jffm/ Hai!" wailed the young wife, "he is 
 dead!" 
 
 "Hush, woman, they were not all dead," an- 
 swered the pilgrim. 
 
 "Where are you going now?" asked one of the 
 missionaries, her eyes full of tears. 
 
 "I am going back to the Queen's palace. I was 
 her teacher. I taught her all I knew from the 
 
14 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 Vedas, but I now have some new spells to teach 
 her. I grew tired there before, for the maids, oh^ 
 the maids, they tossed their heads," and the old 
 pilgrim imitated them very perfectly. ''They 
 were jealous and they brought the laugh upon me 
 whenever possible. They said, ' Who is this woman 
 that has stepped in ? ' They cared for nothing but 
 rings, and bracelets, and jewelry. I wear only 
 this," and she showed the iron band on her arm, 
 the badge of widowhood. 
 
 ' ' I thought there was a king of Chatrapur, ' ' said 
 one of the missionaries. 
 
 ' ''Oh, there was, but he is a holy man who spends 
 all his time going from one shrine to another. He 
 will try to find amid the Himalayas the sacred spot 
 where Gunga begins to flow, a drop from Heaven. 
 He has been gone many years giving himself to the 
 worship of the gods. The queen is very anxious 
 lest his brother seize the throne and wrest it from 
 her eldest son, for whom she is trying to hold it. 
 The king has been gone so long that the people are 
 beginning to complain, for there is no one to whom 
 to appeal, and they wish to make his brother king. 
 The queen told me to go to Calcutta and gain audi- 
 ence of the great lady who reigns— the Viceroy's 
 wife— and ask her to speak to His Excellency 
 about this matter of saving the throne for the 
 king's son. But I went to Jagannath to pray in- 
 stead. Who knows if I should have gained the 
 white queen's ear?" 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 15 
 
 ''And what are you taking back to your mis- 
 tress?" asked the eldest missionary. 
 
 *'This," said she, and she pulled from her bun- 
 dle a small idol. "This is a Sita. She will cause 
 Ram to bless the Queen of Chatrapur! Bam will 
 overcome the uncle even as he did Bawan, the king 
 of rakshas (demons) in Ceylon!" 
 
 **What will you do if the queen is not pleased 
 that you disobey her command?" 
 
 **I will tell her the white queen sent me to Sita 
 because the heart of the King of Chatrapur has 
 been stolen by the gods, and not by men, and only 
 gods can fight against the gods. Did not Bam 
 overcome even gods? Sita will influence Bam to 
 fight against the deities that are driving the king 
 mad, while the white queen will only influence the 
 Viceroy, who worships not the gods of Hindustan. ' ' 
 
 *' There is hope for you, but not in a poor queen 
 who died centuries ago. The heaven-dwelling 
 Father hears the prayers of the distressed. He is 
 displeased with idolatry, but He has shown His 
 love to men in that He sent His Son to earth to tell 
 the people how they can find Him. The poor king 
 is searching after God, but our God dwells not in 
 stone or a house made with hands." 
 
 The old pilgrim stopped her with an eager ex- 
 clamation. **That is a new story; I like it. I 
 found not my heart's rest even in the sacred en- 
 closure of Jagannath!" 
 
 ^'Haif Hai!" cried the mother. 
 
16 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 ''Don't be sad. There is hope, there is a Me- 
 diator, there is one to speak for us to God, but how 
 can sinful eyes see God? It says in the Holy 
 Book, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God.' " Then the story of Christ and the sac- 
 rifice followed. 
 
 The eldest missionary, turning to the pilgrim, 
 said: "Take this news back to your queen, that 
 God is One, and there is no hope in gods of stone. 
 Tell her to appeal to the Political Agent of the 
 kingdom of Chatrapur. Tell him of the plot and 
 let him advise her, for he is an Englishman, and 
 knows how to manage such affairs. He may be 
 able to recall the king and get him to set his king- 
 dom in order. That is the proper way to approach 
 the English government." 
 
 The missionaries again rose to go, but the women 
 crowded about them. "We must know more," 
 said the mother-in-law, ' ' we may forget your story, 
 for it is a new one. Come back next week." 
 
 "There are many to hear the story, and there 
 are few of us to tell it, but we will try to come 
 again. ' ' 
 
 "I am so glad I came," said the youngest wom- 
 an. "There are so many people who need this 
 Message." 
 
 Though late in the morning the missionaries de- 
 cided to go to Jalalpur, as this was bazaar day. If 
 they could find people who were able to read, they 
 would scatter portions of the Bible among them. 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 17 
 
 There was a ride of two miles, part of it on the 
 military road, and then they saw the busy scene 
 of bazaar day. All along the street people sat with 
 baskets of fruit, vegetables, and grains, while oth- 
 ers had trinkets and bright cotton cords for tying 
 up the hair, or to run in the gathered skirts worn 
 by Mohammedan women. There were beads and 
 glass bracelets of many colors ; there were earrings, 
 nose rings, toe rings, necklaces, anklets and all 
 kinds of cheap jewelry. There were little heaps 
 of bright bits of glass, used by the women to paste 
 upon their foreheads for ornaments; wooden 
 combs, tin buttons, matches, tiny looking-glasses, 
 and coarse thread wound on cards, to tempt the 
 passersby. There were bolts of cotton cloth in 
 bright colors as well as unbleached cloth right from 
 the loom. It had been woven and colored there 
 in the bazaar, where it was purchased and worn 
 that same day— a complete costume going on with- 
 out the stitch of a needle. Proud fathers were 
 buying caps for their little sons, who, but for the 
 caps, would have been quite unclothed. A boy 
 went by eating a cucumber, as well satisfied as a 
 boy of a colder clime would be with an apple. On 
 the sheet of one vender were all kinds of spices ar- 
 ranged with the ever-present garlic. 
 
 Before the missionaries had descended from the 
 cart they were surrounded by a motley crowd of 
 brown faces. There were farmers with dirty white 
 hurt as (shirts) and draperies, ungainly turbans 
 
18 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 on their heads, and equally ungainly shoes on their 
 feet; children, bright of face and scant of cloth- 
 ing; women with their purchases on their heads 
 (not in hats, but in baskets). Many had children 
 two or three years of age astride their hips— 
 bright-eyed little ones eating guavas, turnips, rad- 
 ishes, cucumbers, or whatever pleased their youth- 
 ful fancies. A fakir with ashes in his long matted 
 hair and streaked on his bare body, stood on the 
 edge of the crowd. A nasal cry was heard and a 
 leper, with his feet gone, crawled near the crowd 
 stretching out a pitiful remnant of a hand for 
 alms. His hair was quite white and his face had 
 an indescribable look of gradual death. One of the 
 missionaries called to a shopkeeper to give him 
 some parched grain, paying for it herself in pref- 
 erence to giving the money to the leper to handle 
 in those wretched, decaying hands. A woman 
 stood near with her nose quite gone. 
 
 **Is she also a leper?'' was asked. 
 
 **No; her husband cut her nose off," sneered a 
 man standing near. A woman who saw the gift 
 bestowed on the leper crowded her way to the cart 
 to show her broken fingers. 
 
 ^ ' Oh, what happened to them ? ' ' 
 
 **I beat them on the stones when my husband 
 died"— a man pushed her aside to show a terrible 
 cancer. 
 
 *'0h, dear; oh, dear!" said the youngest mis- 
 sionary, *'I cannot endure this!" 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 19 
 
 *'It is much worse on bazaar days than others,'* 
 said another missionary. ''The afflicted come then 
 to show their misery and beg from the people. We 
 will drive on now, but first I will ask if any one 
 w^ants a book?'' 
 
 A number wanted them for the small sum of 
 one pice (one-half cent) apiece. Especially they 
 wanted a little pamphlet of Christian songs. When 
 these w^ere sold they untangled themselves from 
 the crowd slowly, so slowly, because of the beggars 
 and the curious. Two bright-faced boys ran after 
 them for song books, holding up pice that had been 
 given them for sweetmeats. They went back happy 
 with their new books. As the missionaries drove 
 out of the bazaar they noticed a young woman 
 following them rapidly. Outside the bazaar she 
 began to run. Before she reached them they 
 stopped the cart because they caught a glimpse of 
 her eager, distressed face. 
 
 **0h, take me with you! I can not stay here; 
 what will happen to me if you leave me here ? You 
 are most kind and merciful. Oh, give me to as- 
 cend into the cart quickly, quickly, Mem Sahih!'* 
 
 Quickly they made room for the slender figure 
 and she leaned over whispering to the eldest mis- 
 sionary : ' ' My husband died last night, and we are 
 strangers here. ' ' Then she went on in a low tone : 
 ''His father's house is far toward the north, but 
 he came through here on his way to Benares to 
 find a guru (master) who could tell him if ho 
 
20 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 might cross the black water and become a scholar ; 
 and now he is dead ! No one knows he is dead in 
 the serai (travelers' rest house) not far from here. 
 His body must be burned with proper ceremonies. 
 I have jewelry here about my waist. I saw you 
 pass this morning and I followed you. If you do 
 not help me I must throw myself into a well or die 
 some way. There is no one but the white people 
 who would not be glad to seize my jewels, and I 
 will die of shame among strangers ! ' ' 
 
 * * What emergencies ! ' ' thought the younger mis- 
 sionary. 
 
 *'We can not all go," said the missionary to 
 whom the woman had spoken. She had turned to 
 her companions and was speaking in English. **We 
 will get another cart at the next village and you 
 must go on home in this one. I know you want to 
 help, but it is better for fewer to go. It will be 
 necessary to send Mungli and Baldev to inform 
 the Tahsildar (a civil officer) of the occurrence." 
 
 When they reached the serai, the elder woman 
 descended and with the native woman peered in. 
 A young native man lay dead on a cot. He had 
 evidently died from cholera. A woman of the 
 sweeper caste had already arrived and a man of 
 the same caste stood outside. That meant that 
 these outcaste people could be called upon for help. 
 The missionary left there never forgot that after- 
 nx)on. Preparations for the burial were begun be- 
 fore the men who were sent for arrived. When 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 21 
 
 they came a policeman, sent by the Tahsildar, was 
 with them. Thankful indeed was the faint and 
 weary missionary that the comfortable missionary 
 tanga (cart) was sent to take her home. She took 
 the wailing wife home with her. ''Home, home,'' 
 the missionary repeated to herself, "thank God 
 for a home in this stranger land." 
 
 After a few days the young woman told her 
 story. *'My father-in-law had two wives. My 
 husband's own mother was dead and the women 
 of that household were not kind to me when I went 
 there as a child-wife. My husband did not knoAV 
 how wicked they were and I was afraid to tell, 
 they told me such dreadful stories. I constantly 
 feared the vengeance of the gods for some of the 
 sins I was told I daily committed. The years went 
 on and no children came to me. Little boys and 
 girls played about the household, but there were 
 none of them mine. After a pilgrimage which my 
 husband took, and after having made many offer- 
 ings myself to the gods, a tiny baby daughter was 
 born to us, but she never breathed. It was better 
 so, but I loved that little still baby more than any- 
 thing that has ever come to me. Everybody but 
 my husband told me it was better that she was 
 born dead. My husband was all the time studying, 
 and he learned English in the great school in Cal- 
 cutta. At last he told me he wanted to go over the 
 * black water' and learn more, but his people said 
 it could never be, that it would break his caste and 
 
22 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 disgrace them all. He told me he did not care for 
 caste rules. I was very much frightened and trem- 
 bled every time I thought of my husband's break- 
 ing caste. After a while, when his father died, he 
 became rich enough to gain the desire of his heart, 
 and then he told me of this wise sage who lives in 
 Benares. YVe w^ere going to him, but we stopped 
 off at the station nearest here to find the temple of 
 Jalalpur, where the light burns. My husband 
 asked every traveler we met what they knew of the 
 wdse men of each place, and so he learned of some 
 gurus (masters) about here. Now I know the gods 
 ^^V7ere made angry by his desire to cross the black 
 waters! His tw^o older brothers will take all his 
 property, for they will think me the cause of this 
 — and who knows but that my sins have wrought 
 my widowhood? I dare not go back to those 
 wicked mothers-in-law and the wives of my hus- 
 band's older brothers. You are kind to me and 
 all my hope is in you. My husband was to get 
 money from his uncle in Benares. We had sixty 
 rupees (about twenty dollars) and my jewels with 
 us. I took the money from him when he was ill 
 and he told me to hide it in my clothes. I shall 
 never return to my husband's family, and I will 
 be only a disgrace to my own people. I shall spend 
 my years in pilgrimages, to get rid of this sin 
 w^hich has caused my widowhood. ' * 
 
 **You must not talk more of this, little sister, 
 for your face is hot and you tremble so. ' ' 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 23 
 
 But the young widow went on: "I talked with 
 him much about consulting the gods and the great 
 Brahmins. It was to please me that he stopped 
 here on his way to Benares. The gods are angry 
 with me when I was true to them, and so they have 
 taken my husband's life. My people are all dead 
 but my brother, and he will fear my baneful in- 
 fluence. There is nothing for me, a childless 
 widow, but death. You are so kind and merciful, 
 do you not fear a widow ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' You are only to be pitied, not feared ; you may 
 live here with Gulabi Bai and we will teach you 
 God's love and mercy," was the reply. 
 
 ''Is Gulabi Bai a Brahmin?" 
 
 *' Gulabi Bai is a Christian." 
 
 * ' Then we can not eat together ! ' ' 
 
 "You may cook your own food and eat by your- 
 self, though God has not separated His children, 
 as you suppose. ' ' 
 
 Later the missionary said to her companion: 
 ''How I thank our Father for that allowance for 
 the help of widows, which a dear Christian widow 
 sent our Board. I built the house where Gulabi 
 Bai lives with a part of the money, and it will be 
 such a good refuge for this woman. I am glad it 
 is ready this very day. We will keep her and teach 
 her." 
 
 Ah, roadsides in India hold many stories ! 
 
Part II. 
 
 A BICYCLE sped along the military road 
 and the young woman mounted upon it 
 wore a pleasant smile on her face. To be 
 sure, the face and smile were almost obscured by 
 the shadow of a huge pith sun-helmet, but she was 
 happy, and enjoying that feeling of freedom one 
 ^r has when riding a wheel. She was also looking for- 
 ward to her morning in the village. Before her 
 lay an avenue of bamboo waving airily in the slight 
 breeze. The shadows were most inviting on this 
 hot morning. A great lumbering cart drawn by 
 two oxen lay between her and that shady bit. The 
 driver began to turn his animals out of the way 
 and was going through a whole gymnastic perform- 
 ance in doing so, at the same time making strange 
 cries to the oxen, when the light figure flitted by. 
 He stopped in the middle of the road, staring and 
 gasping with astonishment. On she went until she 
 saw a bowed form just ahead of her, apparently 
 the figure of an old woman carrying a burden. 
 Thinking she was probably deaf, the young woman 
 dismounted for fear the sudden passing might 
 frighten her. 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 25 
 
 *^Aree-h!" exclaimed the old woman, dropping 
 her burden. 
 
 The young American spoke to her cheerily. 
 **This is my foot-wagon; do you wish to see me 
 ride upon it ? Perhaps I am going to your village. 
 What village are you from?'* 
 
 ''Pachkhura." 
 
 **Yes, that is just the place I am going. Are 
 there many people in your village?" 
 
 **Many, many have died," the old woman re- 
 sponded; ''the clouds give no rain and though we 
 sow our fields we get no harvest. Last night my 
 sister-in-law died because we could not give her 
 the food she needed. Everybody will die, for the 
 gods are angry with Hindustan." 
 
 *'Do you know that the people of Hindustan 
 have long worshiped gods of wood and stone ? Lis- 
 ten and I will tell you the Truth." 
 
 The missionary told the old story so new to the 
 listener, but she saw in that face a word written 
 that only ''Give ye them to eat" could reach. 
 "Famine" was certainly engraved there. 
 
 "Sister," she said, "here are some pice; go and 
 buy you something to eat." 
 
 The poor woman fell on the ground with many- 
 expressions of abject gratitude. ' ' Go and get your 
 food, and remember there is one God who is Father 
 of us all, and one Savior who can save from sin." 
 
 On through that fatal sunshine the missionary 
 
26 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 sped, when suddenly she saw, lying prone in the 
 dust, a small brown figure. 
 
 ''What has happened?" she exclaimed in Hin- 
 dustanee. The figure rolled over and sat up. 
 
 "I have no one," said the little boy, with fever- 
 ish looking eyes, raising a trembling hand as 
 though in fear of the strange person standing over 
 him. '*I came home from the fields and found my 
 parents dead, and I ran away. Now I have no 
 one. I burn with fever, and I have found nothing 
 to eat." 
 
 ''Can you walk?" asked the missionary. 
 
 The child staggered to his feet. "A little," he 
 answered, at the same time falling back into a 
 little heap of brown again. "I am dying of 
 fever." 
 
 "I will get a cart to take you to a place where 
 you shall have care." She sprang on her wheel 
 and soon met the cart she had passed. 
 
 "Can you take a boy to the Mission House?" 
 she asked the man in the cart. "You have seen 
 the bungalow in the town?" 
 
 "Yes, yes," said the driver. 
 
 "You will be paid for taking him." 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 "You will be paid for one-half day's work with 
 your team. It is only about a kos distant (two 
 miles)." 
 
 The driver tarried, but finally decided to return 
 with the boy. The missionary took a pencil and 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 27 
 
 paper out of the bag hanging to her wheel and 
 wrote a note which she gave to the man, who 
 looked at it most curiously. 
 
 ''Give this to the 3Iem Sahib and she will pay 
 you and take the boy. ' ' 
 
 The cart went jogging back over the road and 
 the missionary went on to the village. She looked 
 over the plain and saw clumps of trees, marking 
 the village sites. She saw in imagination the white 
 towers of little churches. She saw by the roadside 
 tiny school-houses, and met merry brown children 
 with books and slates going happily to school. She 
 saw these in her dreams instead of mud huts, and 
 temples, and thin, naked figures suffering and 
 prone in the dust. Hers was a prophet's soul and 
 she saw possibilities. 
 
 Shortly she met two men plodding along in the 
 dust. They made funny village obeisances and she 
 was about to pass on when she recognized them as 
 two farmers whom the missionaries had once 
 helped to procure seed grain. Now they were 
 pausing. 
 
 ''You had great mercy on us,'' said the men, 
 *'but the gods had no mercy and our fields are dry 
 as dust. Do you think the Mem SaJiih would lend 
 us rupees f 
 
 "We have few rupees and can not lend," she said 
 sadly. 
 
 "Are not the Sahih-log rich and could they not 
 lend us a few rupees f 
 
28 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 *'We are not rich, but the true God whom we 
 worship does supply our needs. We hope to help 
 the people of India, but they follow gods who teach 
 them to injure their bodies and spirits, and to 
 keep their country in darkness. Their teachers 
 whom they reverence do deeds most hateful to the 
 Father in Heaven. How much have you given 
 your priests to bring rain? Now you are coming 
 to us to give you the money the God you will not 
 serve has given us to save the helpless little ones. 
 Did you read the book the Mem Sahih gave you 
 that day in which she told you were written the 
 ^ words of lifer' 
 
 One man said he could not read; the other an- 
 swered that his guru (master) said it was not good 
 for him to read. 
 
 **Ah, so you scorn God's word and yet you ask 
 for His mercy and money to buy grain for your 
 fields?" 
 
 The young missionary rode on, but her heart was 
 sore. **Did I do right, did I speak right words? 
 Was I hasty and unjust ? More wisdom, more wis- 
 dom!" Such thoughts went swiftly through her 
 brain, and prayers for help rose from her heart. 
 
 As she neared the village she saw a strange fig- 
 ure standing near the entrance by a grass house. 
 His skin looked like brown parchment, seamed 
 and wrinkled. His small eyes were almost ob- 
 scured by folds of skin. Their expression verged 
 on the idiotic, but as the missionary drew near he 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 29 
 
 began to talk and she soon discovered that this 
 creature was the village doctor, with his bundle of 
 precious remedies. There were scorpion stings, du- 
 bious oils, enchanted herbs, and an iron for burn- 
 ing off eruptions on the skin. He was muttering 
 an incantation and she hastened by, only saying 
 Salaam. Once within the village she heard groan- 
 ing and crying issuing from the headman's quar- 
 ters. One of the women of the household had 
 thrown herself on a cot and was crying out. 
 
 '*What has happened?" inquired the visitor. 
 
 "Baribai was troubled much with boils and the 
 haJcim (doctor) has burned them off !'* 
 
 ' ' Oh, I shall die ! ' ' screamed the poor woman. 
 
 ''He rubbed some spices on the places," the old 
 mother-in-law explained. 
 
 ''How cruel, how cruel!" said the missionary, 
 feeling her eyes filling with tears. "Bring me 
 some water and some cotton. ' ' 
 
 Tenderly she bathed the sores amidst the wom- 
 an's cries, and washed out the hot spices before 
 they could fester in the dreadful wounds. How 
 she wished she had brought her bandages, but 
 finally she found some clean cloth and managed to 
 leave the woman much more comfortable. She felt 
 too much exhausted to talk to them very long, but 
 tarried to tell them how wrong the treatment had 
 been. Then she said, with a bright smile: "We 
 hope to have a physician from our country next 
 
30 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 cool season. Some one who can help the sick and 
 not treat them in this cruel manner." 
 
 * * Tell him to come very quickly. Last night Ba- 
 hadur 's child died. She fell and hurt her arm. 
 It swelled and pained her, and the bone came 
 through the skin, Mem Saliib, and she died!" 
 
 * * The poor child must have broken her arm. ' ' 
 **Yes, yes, and Matra's boy broke his leg. He 
 
 is very lame and that leg is much shorter than the 
 other." 
 
 ^'Mem Sahib, won't you sing us a song?" asked 
 another one. 
 
 **I will sing to you about the great Physician^ 
 but first I must tell you of Him." 
 
 She told the story of Christ on earth and of His 
 miracles in healing the sick. "He has given His 
 people skill in medicine and we can always pray to 
 Him to help us. In His garden in Heaven grow 
 leaves which are for the healing of the nations. 
 He can heal us from sin, which is the worst of dis- 
 eases." Her message was spoken and the people 
 were invited to come on Sunday to the church in 
 the town to hear more. 
 
 Two miles distant was another village where a 
 number of lepers lived. She felt that she must go 
 there, too, and tell those dying ones of Jesus. Two 
 women from the village were coming down the 
 road as she approached. They were dressed in 
 purplish cotton draperies with a wide, irregular 
 border of a lighter tint. One of them carried a 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 31 
 
 year-old baby astride her hip and the other bore a 
 basket on her head. Why was it that a mental pic- 
 ture thrust itself in between the missionary and 
 this familiar scene? She saw in memory two 
 young women coming down an avenue in a far- 
 away city. One wheeled a baby carriage along, 
 light and dainty in pink silk and lace. Beneath its 
 airy canopy the tiny face of a blue-eyed baby 
 smiled out from soft embroidered pillows. The 
 other young woman carried under her arm a neat 
 package. The two were conversing in soft tones 
 and their passing wafted a delicate violet fra- 
 grance. But they were far away, and the women 
 at her side, staring stupidly at her, had never 
 touched lace, or heard in all their lives the expres- 
 sion of noble thoughts. Yet their hearts were not 
 unloving. The one carrying her baby looked at 
 him with pride when the white woman said, ''He 
 is a fine, healthy boy. ' ' 
 
 It was not a pleasant visit ahead of her and yet 
 she went on hoping to take some cheer to the lepers. 
 There were some wretched grass huts on the edge 
 of the village and a creature stepped out of one 
 that almost made the missionary wish to retreat. 
 The poor creature had both feet gone, eaten off 
 by the loathsome disease of leprosy. His hair was 
 perfectly white, and his face was swollen and dis- 
 torted. ''Tell all the lepers to come to the tree by 
 the gate; I want to talk with you." Ten people^ 
 pitiful wrecks of the human body, gathered siowly 
 
32 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 under the tree. **Wliat a figure of sin, what a fig- 
 ure of sin/^ was the undercurrent of her thought. 
 
 *' Listen/' she said, *'next Sunday a Christian 
 man will bring you all some rice. To-day I have 
 <jome to tell you that there is hope for you, that 
 the one God has salvation for you also." They 
 listened and one of them wept and called his body 
 a prison. As she rose to go she saw on the other 
 side of the tree a stone with a patch of red paint 
 upon it. It was a village deity, to them a deliverer 
 from their cherished fear of demons. The worship 
 of the majority of the villagers of India is a wor- 
 sjjip of demons, of whom they live in constant fear 
 and dread. 
 
 Her thought ran on as she turned homeward. 
 This has been my day of seeing physical suffering, 
 it seems. How closely connected is the soul and 
 the body; but these people do not know that the 
 «oul has wings, that there can be a rising above the 
 prison life of the earth. He came to seek and to 
 save the lost. He saw life 's saddest side with deeply 
 seeing eyes and He is with me. But it is hard to 
 wait until these villages shall be swept and gar- 
 nished, until a doctor comes with relief for some 
 of the suffering, until we have schools where the 
 younger generation shall receive a daily incentive 
 to a higher life. She passed a grove of trees by 
 a well, and thought how glad she would be to see 
 underneath those trees eager brown faces looking 
 into a preacher's face as he read to them in their 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 33 
 
 own language the words of life. She thought how 
 she would like to hear them singing, ** Blest Be the 
 Tie that Binds" and ''How Firm a Foundation." 
 * ' It might be, it might be ! " ran through her mind 
 as the wheels of her bicycle rotated over the brown 
 roads. Her head ached when she reached the Mis- 
 sion Home, but she found a cool resting place in 
 her own room. She went in feeling weak and al- 
 most forgetting that she had need of food. The 
 door opened softly and the young widow whom 
 they found by the way in the first village tour 
 slipped quietly in with a tray of food. 
 
 "I saved your 'big breakfast' for you, Pyari 
 (beloved), and you must eat." 
 
 "How kind of you, my sister; are you happy 
 here?" 
 
 ' ' So happy since I have found a friend in Jesus. 
 I read some by myself this morning about His 
 works and I want to go and help you in the vil- 
 lages. I have thought, too, that I would ask you to 
 send a letter to my brother and tell him of my be- 
 coming a Christian. I believe I should tell him. 
 They will perform my funeral ceremonies, I know, 
 but I dare not let him go without a message from 
 me and my Savior." 
 
 There are joys waiting to be found by India's 
 roadsides, too! 
 
Part III. 
 
 THE village of Akoni contained thirty-one 
 houses and two hundred and fifty-one in- 
 habitants. Of this number of people, there 
 were one hundred and six males and ninety-five 
 females. Many a little girl in that small village 
 had been exposed or **let alone" to die. There 
 were two Mohammedans. The rest were Hindus^ 
 and not one person in the village could read. The 
 missionaries, in looking over the Census Report for 
 their district, found that in one Thana (a sub- 
 division of a district) there were seventy-nine vil- 
 lages. Of the eighteen thousand male inhabitants 
 of these villages, only six hundred and fifty could 
 read. This was deplorable enough, but of the sev- 
 enteen thousand females not one could read. 
 
 **I want to change that Census Report, '^ said 
 one, earnestly. 
 
 **If we had a teacher and three dollars and fifty 
 cents a month, with— let us say— one dollar for 
 supplies, we could make a great change in Akoni, ' ' 
 said the older missionary sadly. 
 
 **We might teach a young man of that village 
 to read and set him to teaching his own people, for 
 we certainly have no teacher to spare now.'* 
 
 **But if he is not a Christian, the motive power 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 35 
 
 of love, and the desire to be honest and helpful to 
 others, would not be there. He would also observe 
 caste distinctions in the school. We need a Chris- 
 tian man whom we can oversee. I think we might 
 get a Christian man and his .wife from some old 
 school of another mission, but that money — ' ' 
 
 **We must do something to evangelize our vil- 
 lages anyway, and I am going tomorrow," said 
 another. 
 
 Early the next morning she went to one of the 
 villages they had not visited for three months. 
 "How glad we are that you have come again," 
 said one woman, ''but Amma (mother) is dead. 
 She died mourning for her son, who never re- 
 turned from Jagannath, and his widow started on 
 the same pilgrimage last week. She will try to find 
 him, but we believe she is a widow. Amma wanted 
 to see you very much before she died. She said 
 you spoke sweet words." 
 
 How the heart of the missionary sank. So many 
 were depending on her, on one solitary woman of 
 limited strength, for every word of Eternal Life 
 and Hope ! Ah, they laid thick about her, a thou- 
 sand unreached villages, and there were only a 
 half dozen laborers with an occasional opportunity 
 of going out into the vast and dying harvest field ! 
 If she had been able to leave her room last week 
 she might have saved the young wife from the dan- 
 gers of that pilgrimage, but oh, the limits ! Bodies 
 that grow weary and faint, spirits sickening at tho 
 
36 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 continued sights and sounds of idolatry and its 
 curses. Money that fails in the hand reached out 
 to help the suffering and the dying. Limits ! Lim- 
 its! The old pilgrim had come back to find the 
 white woman and hear more, but she had not 
 waited. The queen had sent her on another quest 
 for help to Badrinath, high up amid the Hima- 
 layan snows, ten thousand four hundred feet above 
 the level of the sea. ''The old woman will never 
 survive going from the heat of the plains to the 
 cold of that high altitude," thought the mission- 
 ary. ' ' They do not wait for one to come. They go 
 on in their search for a Hope and do not wait. In 
 my home town to-day, with its population of five 
 thousand, there are six churches, with buildings 
 and pastors. My share of our parish here is two 
 hundred and fifty villages, a town of twelve thou- 
 sand, and two towns of five thousand. Is there 
 any use, is there any use trying?" 
 
 ^'Mem Sahih, my brother bought one of your 
 books and he wants you to come to our house. He 
 is sick." 
 
 The young missionary turned to greet a large- 
 eyed child wrapped in his dhoti (drapery) and 
 started with him toward a mud house. On a cot 
 outside lay a young man who raised himself on 
 his elbow. 
 
 *'I have read your book, Mem Sahib. I read it 
 before the fever came and all the time while I 
 burned with fever I heard a voice saying: 'Let 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 37 
 
 him that is a-thirst come ! Let him that is a-thirst 
 come ! ' It is in the back of your book. Tell me of 
 the One who said these gracious words. I am tired 
 of thirst and hunger. I have never been satisfied. 
 My heart is very weary." 
 
 ^'I will tell you some more gracious words, 
 brother. ' Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' There is 
 but One who can satisfy us and that One is Jesus, 
 God's Only Son, His Only Incarnation. He never 
 meant that we should depend on bits of wood and 
 stone and clay for comfort. The Father in Heaven 
 wants to comfort us and rest us Himself. He 
 wants us to have faith in Him who is above all 
 principalities and powers, and He has given Him 
 a name that is above every name. Our God is 
 above us and all we can make. Do you not believe 
 in Jesus as your Savior?" 
 
 ''Yes, yes; this Book has taught me that idola- 
 try is a sin. I shall never worship that stone yon- 
 der again. I have told no one, but I wish you to 
 call my people. I have something to say to them. ' ' 
 
 The missionary beckoned to the mother and 
 brother. The mother was a widow, but there was 
 still another son and his wife. The wife of the 
 sick man sat near with her cloth over her face. 
 
 "I want to tell you that stone yonder is only a 
 stone. I worship it never more. I worship Him 
 who rules heaven and earth. I take His Son, 
 3"esus, for my Savior." 
 
38 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 ''Alas, Alas! the gods will punish you and us, 
 for those first words," said the mother. ''Worship 
 whom you will, but forsake not these ! ' ^ 
 
 With a prayer on her lips the missionary turned 
 to the mother. "When you come to the door of 
 death, will you not want something better than the 
 hope of living over and over in some dying earthly 
 form ? There is a better hope for you and for him. 
 A hope to live in the mansions of God's own 
 house, to live with the good and pure eternally. I 
 am giving you God's Word, something higher than 
 man ever spake." Then she recited clearly in their 
 own language, "In my Father's house are many 
 mansions. ' ' 
 
 "A good word, a good word," murmured the 
 «ick man. "I never learned this by the Ganges. 
 I have been troubled, for I refused to take the 
 mantar from my guru.'' [The mantar is a sacred 
 formula whispered by the guru, or religious guide, 
 into the ear of the devotee, to be kept as a motto. 
 It is given specially to those who are intending to 
 lead a religious life.] "I have been told it is very 
 unlikely that I shall be born a human being when 
 I leave this body, because I refused to take the 
 mantar. I feared to die, but now you tell me sal- 
 vation is through Jesus Christ. Tell me more." 
 
 She sat there an hour and talked. His people 
 crowded about. There was a shade on the faces of 
 some, but the young man's face was full of light. 
 As usual, she carried some medicine for fever with 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 39 
 
 her, whicli she gave to him. Then she prayed with 
 him. As she went away the mother followed her. 
 
 ** Don't let him speak against our gods," she 
 begged, '*they will curse us and him!" 
 
 She tried to make it all more clear to the mother, 
 but she only shook her head, trying not to Ksten. 
 
 ''And I," she thought, "was oppressed with all 
 remaining to be done, even discouraged, and God 
 led me to a prepared soul this very morning. How 
 different are their sick beds from ours ! No clean, 
 inviting sheets, no pillows, no crystal glasses of re- 
 freshing water. Nothing clean, nothing dainty. No 
 one skillful, no one who knows how to be really 
 kind! There that sick man lay on sagging ropes 
 woven across the cot with a thin, dirty resai (a 
 sort of cotton mattress) under him. The glaring 
 sun was upon him until I told them to change his 
 position. They will probably move him back again, 
 now I am gone. We must get at the root of the 
 matter. There will be no real change until idol- 
 atry is supplanted by Christianity. We may try 
 to lop off the effects, but the root of the trouble re- 
 mains. They need what Jesus teaches and they 
 must believe on Him." So the missionary mused 
 until she came to a bathing tank, at the edge of 
 which she saw there was a great excitement. 
 
 "What has happened?" she questioned. 
 
 "Some women were down here bathing," said an 
 old man. "Mungli's wife fell in and a mehter 
 pulled her out just before she was drowned. The 
 
40 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 woman's husband is a caste man and he is going 
 to beat the mehter for touching his wife ! ' ' 
 
 The missionary stood there aghast, but the old 
 man told his story as a mere commonplace. A meh- 
 ter is an out-caste, a scavenger, but he had saved 
 a woman's life and was going to be beaten for it I 
 
 * ' You ungrateful man. He has saved your wife 's 
 life. She would be lying here dead but for him. 
 You should reward him with a gift!" 
 
 ''He touched her," said the man, stolidly, but 
 he made no further attempt to strike his wife's 
 rescuer. 
 
 The mehter went off quietly, not stopping to 
 wring out his wet garments, seeming glad to es- 
 cape the beating. The missionary passed on think- 
 ijig of the daily papers in her home town. Such an 
 act in their vicinity would call forth public praise 
 for the citizen of such bravery and presence of 
 mind, and this young man had gone forth with 
 curses instead of blessings. He accepted his fate^ 
 as he considered it. This belonged to a set of not 
 unusual happenings, but the American woman was 
 full of indignation. 
 
 It was growing very hot. She felt that she 
 should not be out in the sun now, but she saw some 
 women by a well and felt constrained to speak to 
 them. 
 
 ''May I tell you about the Water of Life?" she 
 asked. 
 
 The women paused. One was just leaving with 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 41 
 
 two jars of water, one on top the other on her head. 
 Another was drawing up her jar from the well. 
 Others stood waiting. Some looked wonderingly 
 at the Mem Sahib, some stupidly, but she preached 
 to them the sermon of Jesus by the well. 
 
 ''Yes, yes; we need much water," assented one 
 woman. 
 
 "What is there, after this life?" asked the mis- 
 sionary, changing her plan. 
 
 ^^Ko janef exclaimed an old woman, "Who 
 knows ? ' ' 
 
 "You will be born a mosquito, perhaps," said a 
 younger woman, carefully brushing that insect 
 from her hand. 
 
 They lingered while she spoke to them. One 
 woman said she wished her religion was like that. 
 One said her neighbor had eaten some of the offer- 
 ings to Malmdeo (the great god) and he would be 
 a dog in his next birth. That all dogs contained 
 the souls of those who had eaten offerings belong- 
 ing to Mahadeo. She had never eaten any offer- 
 ings, so she did not know what there was for her 
 after death. Being a woman was bad enough and 
 she showed the missionary two dreadful scars on 
 one limb below the knee. 
 
 ' ' How came those ? ' ' 
 
 "My man cut me there with a rope." 
 
 "Where do you live?" 
 
 ' * In your town. We often see you buying in the 
 bazaar and saying kind words. They sound sweet 
 
42 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 and I heard you sing a song one day about some 
 one who had saved your life/' 
 
 **Yes, I know the one you mean; shall I sing 
 it?'' 
 
 Two women now went off. Their Hindu sister's 
 story had reminded them that a beating might 
 await them, too, if they did not hasten. 
 
 "Jesus has saved my life," 
 
 the song began, and it told of the World's Savior. 
 The women nodded their heads and the one who 
 had spoken wept. 
 
 *'I will try to come to your house. Tell me 
 where it is," said the missionary, rising from the 
 well curb to go. The woman explained the location 
 "^d the figures bearing the water jars went in dif- 
 ferent directions towards their abodes. 
 
 The young widow, Anandibai, was waiting for 
 the missionary when she returned. ^*I want to go 
 with you to-morrow, sister. I have read my chap- 
 ter and have my message. It is the second chapter 
 of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians. "We 
 «an not be saved by our own works." 
 
 This same day a letter came from Anandibai 's 
 brother. It only said they were worshiping the 
 gods that they might not curse them on her ac- 
 count; that her father-in-law and his household 
 told the people that she had killed her husband, and 
 they would kill her if she returned. The youngest 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 43 
 
 of the missionaries took Anandibai with her into 
 her room that first night after this cruel letter 
 came. In the night when she heard her sobbing, 
 the missionary went to her. The girl only said: 
 *' Don't mind me, for it will be all right. I have 
 a comfort. Jesus will not forsake me.'' 
 What a hope ! 
 
Part IV. 
 
 HOW many life messages we receive along^ 
 the way," thought the missionary, as she 
 rode away the next day with Anandibai. 
 *'If one goes on to fuller living they should not 
 ask to linger in any way, however sweet. Life is 
 so full. One needs a deepened heart." 
 
 ^^Hai, hai!'' (alas, alas!) some one was crying- 
 near by, and the missionary left off her meditation 
 and touched life again, such wretched life. A girl 
 of perhaps eight years sat by the dusty roadside. 
 ^J * Where are you going, and what is the matter ? ' ^ 
 
 **I have nowhere to go. I was told to get out 
 of my village, for there is famine there." 
 
 * ' Where is your village ? ' ' 
 
 *' There," she replied, pointing to a clump of 
 trees on the road not far away. 
 
 * ' Get in the front of the cart and I will take you 
 back." 
 
 *'They will beat me." 
 
 * * Get in ; I will take care of you. ' ' 
 
 The child climbed in the cart and crouched down 
 in a frightened manner. When they reached the 
 village the missionary took her in with her. 
 
 ** Whose child is this?" she asked the headman. 
 
 "She is a weaver's child, and there is no food 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 45 
 
 for such as she in this village. She steals and bet- 
 ter people than she will die of hunger. She has no 
 one but an old aunt who is in her son's house. 
 They do not want the girl. Her marriage is ar- 
 ranged. ' ' 
 
 "Where is her aunt?" 
 
 ' ' Over there, ' ' the headman said, designating the 
 house. 
 
 An old woman was bent over a small loom in 
 front of the hut. 
 
 * ' Is this your neice ? ' ' asked the missionary. 
 
 * ' She is none of mine ! What has she been doing 
 now?" grunted the old creature, looking curiously 
 at the foreign woman in the strange clothes. 
 
 ''I shall take her to my house. Has her mar- 
 riage been made ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, and it cost much, your honor, and I shall 
 need that money. She ran away from her father- 
 in-law's house and they will take her back—" 
 
 "They beat me every day," interrupted the 
 child. 
 
 "People are always complaining of her and I 
 eat an oath that you will have only trouble with 
 her." 
 
 "But I will take her and see if she will not try 
 to be a good girl. I hope she will attend to what 
 she is taught. Come with me, daughter." 
 
 The girl darted to the side of her new friend 
 and kept close to her until they were in the cart 
 asrain. 
 
46 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 At the next village they found a wedding pro- 
 cession about to start. The drumming and clang- 
 ing of the so-called musical instruments was heard 
 before they reached the town. When they came to 
 the entrance, the missionary and Anandibai were 
 invited within. There sat the bridegroom, a boy 
 of twelve or thirteen, upon his temporary throne. 
 About him were Brahmins and astronomers, 
 chanting, making prayers and reading in their 
 books, hoping to find a lucky fate for the bride- 
 groom. No one mentioned the bride! 
 
 This young bridegroom belonged to the writer 
 caste. The men of this caste are generally clerks 
 or copyists. His forehead was marked with the 
 tika. Some turmeric had been ground to yellow 
 powder and was streaked upon his forehead and 
 then some whole grains of rice were stuck on. These 
 are symbols of abundance of food. He was dressed 
 in the wedding garments, which were mostly yel- 
 low. On his head was a huge yellow turban. His 
 eyes stared from a rim of lampblack and great 
 earrings dangled from his ears. He was supposed 
 to be in royal state, but the child was being pa- 
 raded around as helpless as a chained monkey. 
 He was about to start for the bride's house, or 
 the house of her father, in a decorated palanqimi. 
 He would meet the bride's procession somewhere 
 outside her village. The boy bridegroom looked 
 very much embarrassed. The crowds about him 
 were making extremely personal remarks, flatter- 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 47 
 
 ing and joking him. The missionary stood look- 
 ing at it all as a picture. She saw the procession 
 start with unmusical instruments. She saw the 
 dancing girls and heard the rude songs. No one 
 had time to listen, for most of the people were in 
 the procession. The child wife, she was told, was 
 only five years old. No one thought pityingly of 
 the tiny bride or the gayly decorated groom, who 
 were children without choice in this important mat- 
 ter. She would probably receive no consider ation^ 
 and he no real companionship or sympathy. It 
 seemed so much a playing at life. 
 
 The missionary found an old woman muttering 
 under a tree by the entrance. 
 
 ''They are gone,'' said the American. 
 
 **Yes," the old woman replied in a rude village 
 dialect. * * Let us go. Women are so fickle and frail 
 that you are never sure what their lives will turn 
 out to be.'' 
 
 She said this in the sing song of a proverb. Anan- 
 dibai stood there, silent up to this time. The mis- 
 sionary looked at her and found her eyes were full 
 of tears. 
 
 ** Sister, I can remember when a tiny girl of 
 riding out, borne aloft, to meet my husband. He 
 did not see me, however, till we were married. 
 Few, few Hindu women go to such a heart as I 
 went to. Boys are taught proverbs that make them 
 so ignorant of woman, and these same proverbs 
 make women disbelieve themselves. My husband 
 
48 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 was taught this: *A drum, a rustic, a servant, a 
 woman — all these go on right when struck,' but 
 lie never struck me. Mine was an unusual state. 
 Our Vedas declare that woman is an incarnation 
 of sin. That bridegroom just going away in his 
 yellow wedding draperies has been carefully taught 
 that women are vain and deceitful. It makes me 
 weep for my country since I have known you and 
 the good news for women that is in the Gospel. The 
 family that begins in this play will have no one 
 to help them to be good. Maybe they will start 
 out on a vain pilgrimage after salvation and knowl- 
 edge. Oh, if my husband could have found be- 
 fore he died the salvation and other worldly wis- 
 ^dom I have found.'' 
 
 Anandibai sank down by the roadside and cried 
 bitterly. 
 
 The old woman crept near her. '^Hai! Hai! 
 "What has happened T' 
 
 ''I am a widow!" Anandibai sobbed. 
 
 "See, woman," said the old pilgrim; ''my arms 
 and hands are bare. Long ago I had my jewels 
 torn from me. Long ago they spoke bitter words 
 to me, and cursed me. I lost my bright draperies 
 and received this," and she showed a breadth of 
 lier scant, dirty cloth once the widow's white. *'I 
 went and poured out my grief to the fields. Every- 
 body hates me. There I have been burned. There 
 a housewife scalded me lest my shadow curse her. 
 There is where a boy beat me for sport. Here is 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 49 
 
 where I cut myself and tried to bleed to death. I 
 have nothing but trouble, and now I shall sit in 
 this village and die. My house is destroyed, but 
 when a little girl my wedding procession went out 
 this gate. I had a bright cloth about me, and jew- 
 els, and there was feasting, and singing, and dan- 
 cing. Then I was a wife and my husband was some- 
 times kind and sometimes hard and cruel. I have 
 been beaten many times, though I gave him-three 
 sons. The sons died and he blamed me for their 
 death. I am a long time widowed and since I saw 
 the smoke rising from his funeral pyre I have not 
 had one kind word spoken to me.*' 
 
 ''Sister,*' said Anandibai, softly, "there is love 
 for such as you and me. I, too, have tasted of the 
 same sorrow, but I have found a Friend. My friend 
 is Jesus, who is God's only Son. He has conquered 
 death, and He teaches that the sadder people are 
 the more kindly they should be treated. In His 
 Gospel there is a place for the widow and the out- 
 caste. Come with us. I believe I was allowed to 
 come to-day to guide you to a better destiny. Since 
 I became a believer in Jesus I have had no oppor- 
 tunity to go about telling of His love and to-day 
 I have come to take you as my first gift to Him." 
 
 *'I do not understand," said the old woman in 
 a dazed manner. 
 
 **Come to our house," the missionary said to 
 her. **We do not believe that widows are curses. 
 
60 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 Anandibai will teach you and we will give you 
 love/' 
 
 The old woman arose, saying, **I will get my 
 dish and come;'' but Anandibai said they would 
 say she stole the dish and asked her to leave it be- 
 hind, for she would receive another from her new 
 friends. They took her into the cart and drove 
 back to the town. This was the second widow in 
 a God-planned Woman's Home. How different 
 were the two women. One so young and gentle and 
 good to look upon. The other so old and marred 
 and unhappy looking. The missionary thanked 
 the Father that the younger widow had been found 
 before blighting hands had been laid heavily upon 
 Jjer. The girl whom nobody wanted sat in one cor- 
 ner of the cart with her arms elapsed over her 
 knees, drawn up into a little bunch. She was go- 
 ing to what was to her an unknown fate, yet she 
 sat there with no sign of fear. Perhaps she was 
 a philosopher and reasoned that if this life to which 
 she was going was miserable, it would be a differ- 
 ent kind of misery, and the change would refresh 
 her. 
 
 It was growing near noon and the missionary 
 was thinking how much could be crowded into 
 even a half day of life. She was thinking of her 
 childhood and of how fond she was of '^ stories." 
 Now almost every day one or more new earth life- 
 stories were told to her in part, always **to be con- 
 tinued" unless death had said, **The end." As 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 51 
 
 they drove on they passed many a wayside shrine. 
 Sometimes it was only a stone set up under a sacred 
 tree, a shapeless stone perhaps, and yet they called 
 it ''Great God." There was one near them now, 
 and a man was eagerly leaving his offering of co- 
 coanuts there; a full-grown man with a face not 
 at all intelligent, and one whose sacred cord told 
 that he was a Brahmin, of the highest caste of the 
 Hindus. Even he was at this worship— and God's 
 great, beautiful world bathed in sunshine was all 
 about. The lace-like verdure of the tamarind and 
 bamboo, mingled with the plumes of the palm. The 
 skies were blue, washed clear by the rains. For a 
 moment they had been so happy, just living amidst 
 all the beauty, and then they saw this man crouched 
 before them worshiping a shapeless stone. 
 
 * * Look up ! look up ! ' ' the missionary cried, al- 
 most involuntarily. **God is not pleased that you 
 worship, instead of Him, a stone. Brother, take 
 this book ; it tells you of Him. ' ' 
 
Part V. 
 
 THE dry, hot days were over and the wet, 
 hot days had come. Then it was hard to 
 go to the villages, but the playing at life 
 went on there. The ** rains" meant that there 
 would not be famine the next year and all discom- 
 fort was accepted as a fore-runner of better days. 
 One day two of the missionaries went to a near vil- 
 lage. The headman's son was sick with cholera. 
 The missionaries were too late to help him, though 
 they had remedies with them. The young man was 
 in utter collapse. They tried heat and stimulants, 
 Jbut it was too late. 
 
 **Six people died here yesterday of that sick- 
 ness, '* said a man of the village. In the wailing 
 and crying over the headman's son the hopeless- 
 ness of Hinduism was once more revealed. No one 
 had a single word of hope to speak. He was dead, 
 and perhaps even now was a dumb animal or a 
 crawling insect. At best he belonged to others, 
 never to them again. 
 
 Again they told the story of the Eesurrection 
 and the Life. *'0h, this dying country!" one 
 exclaimed as they left. '*No, they do not wait for 
 us. They do not wait for all to be set in order in 
 the homeland. Long have we delayed. Foreign- 
 ers are sweeping into our home country. The non- 
 Christians are going in hordes to take advantage 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 53 
 
 of the prosperity of our Christian nation. The 
 home-people can not live apart from the alien, 
 the atheist and the heathen. How much better 
 did they send those to teach them in their natural 
 habitat ! I am so weary of finding superstition 
 and absurd reasoning everywhere and people be- 
 lieving a lie." The elder missionary spoke these 
 words with deep feeling and tears were in her 
 voice. 
 
 "It is harder to bear when one has a headache 
 as well as a heartache," said the other. ''You are 
 not physically well to-day and we are going home. 
 Think that Anandibai waits us there ; that the poor 
 old widow has a word of love and kindness spoken 
 to her to-day; that little children are learning a 
 "new song" to sing to their people when our voices 
 are silent here. Think, dear one, that though mil- 
 lions lie off there in that cloudy east without a 
 helper, we are training helpers to go to them. No 
 day passes without an opportunity to tell of God's 
 love to men, and you help us all. Think of the 
 sisters in the homeland who are praying for us 
 now, and who are working to send forth more la- 
 borers into this great harvest field. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, it all comforts me. I am troubled with 
 headache these days. I think these bodies have such 
 a great deal to do with the soul life after all. I do 
 pray to rise above the physical, but it conquers 
 sometimes." 
 
 Outside the village the people were gathering 
 
54 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 to appease the silent power which was working in 
 their midst bringing death so soon— Haija, the 
 swiftly coming, destructive cholera. No one would 
 take the name of the disease upon his lips. It is a 
 sickness to them most mysterious and most feared. 
 The missionaries stopped to tell the men about 
 some sanitary precautions and went on to another 
 village. 
 
 "What a difference between that boy's death and 
 Hira Lai 's ! Do you remember that dear Christian 
 boy 's last request, that on his grave should be writ- 
 ten, * Not lost, but gone to his Lover ' ? " Thus they 
 conversed together until they came to the next 
 group of houses. They stopped by a tiny grass 
 house, where a potter's family lived, who made 
 their water jars. The family was all out of doors 
 and regarding them wonderingly. 
 
 "Will you bring us some more water jars?" 
 asked one of the missionaries. 
 
 "Yes, your honor; I will bring them on bazaar 
 day." 
 
 Just then a cry rang out. "What is that?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing, Mem Sahib. It is only the Kach- 
 erin's new daughter-in-law. She is a very bad 
 child." 
 
 "Where do they live?" 
 
 ' ' Back of my house, ' ' said the man. 
 
 They went there quickly and found a woman of 
 middle age meting out punishment to a girl of ten. 
 A young man was holding the girl and his mother 
 
BY WxVYSIDES IN INDIA. 55 
 
 was deliberately pinching her cheeks all over, while 
 the child was helplessly screaming. 
 
 ''Stop that!" exclaimed the elderly missionary 
 emphatically. Both the tormentors loosed their 
 hold and sprang up in fear and surprise, and both 
 started to run. ''Wait," said the same mission- 
 ary, "why were you doing this?" 
 
 ' ' She is lazy and ran away, ' ' said the old woman. 
 
 "And she does not cook my food properly," add- 
 ed the young man. 
 
 The child was sobbing and her face was already 
 swelling from the bruises. 
 
 "Is there a policeman here? You need to be 
 put in the jail-khana (prison), both of you. 
 
 They both looked frightened and then they 
 begged her not to let the Sirhar (government) pun- 
 ish them. They had never seen the missionaries 
 and so thought that they were connected with the 
 governing spirit. 
 
 ' ' Such cruelty should be reported to the govern- 
 ment. I shall take your names," was the answer. 
 
 They then started towards the headman's house. 
 
 "Has your sister-in-law come back from her 
 search for her husband?" was the first question 
 asked. 
 
 "No, no," they said, sadly. "They are both 
 dead, we believe. No message comes from them. 
 Our father-in-law has taken another wife since 
 Amma died. She is a young woman and is very 
 hard, and has a bitter tongue. She is within put- 
 
56 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 ting on her jewelry to show you. She came from 
 a distant village.'' 
 
 A young woman soon emerged brightly dressed, 
 with nose rings, toe rings, earrings and finger rings. 
 She evidently felt her position. She had no moth- 
 er-in-law and was herself filling that place. She 
 said she was from a village belonging to a native 
 king; that her father was rich, and her wedding 
 was very grand. She enumerated the amount of 
 rice and sugar and sweetmeats that had been used 
 on that occasion. She was to have been this head- 
 man's wife even had the old woman not died. So 
 she rattled on until one of the missionaries asked : 
 *'Has your husband still other wives?" 
 
 **0h, no; he has no other; he will never have 
 another while I live. The old woman was very 
 tiresome and her tongue was bitter." 
 
 The daughters-in-law sat there looking morose 
 and were quite silent. The younger missionary 
 opened her Hindi hymn book and began singing 
 a song of which the refrain is, *'A11 days do not 
 pass the same, sometimes there is sunshine and 
 sometimes shadow." 
 
 One stanza may be thus translated : 
 
 "As the clouds go from color to color. 
 
 So the world goes on in its change, 
 The king and the subject, the rich and the beggar. 
 
 One by one pass out of this range!" 
 
 This led them to talk of things eternal, for 
 surely all seemed so transitory there. The months. 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 57 
 
 yes, even the days, were full of change. The two 
 missionaries now turned homeward, as ever feeling 
 glad for the refuge. It had been a long day of hard 
 work. To sympathize, to suffer with the suffering, 
 means to give out one's energy. 
 
 The next day the younger missionary felt she 
 must go back to the village and see how the cholera- 
 stricken people were. She promised the others not 
 to go within, only to leave medicine at the gate. 
 This promise she fulfilled. Ten others had died 
 in the night. She called a young man she knew 
 and carefully instructed him as to the medicine, 
 which was very powerful. She was not gone long, 
 but when she returned as far as the gate of the mis- 
 sion grounds she felt that something unusual was 
 occurring. Anandabai ran out of the house with 
 her garments disarranged and her face agonized, 
 * * Sister jee, the big sister jee is sick and we believe 
 it is—haija!'' 
 
 "Cholera and her!" was the thought that 
 flashed through the young missionary's mind. She 
 had not been well yesterday and they had gone 
 unknowingly into the cholera-stricken village. She 
 was tired out at the end of the hot season — ^was 
 she to find her rest now? She tried to quiet her 
 trembling lips and hands. ** Father, give me 
 strength and calmness, for ^Tesus* sake!" The 
 oft-repeated prayer came naturally and its influ- 
 ences, no. His influence, nestled in her heart. Then 
 she saw one of the dear missionary sisters carry- 
 
58 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 ing a hot water bag into the room, and she knew 
 that the sick one was cold. Oh, that dreadful chill ! 
 She softly opened the bedroom door and crept in. 
 
 *' Little sister, I seem to know now how the peo- 
 ple feel. Think of feeling your strength slipping 
 away and no one to help, no one to give you cour- 
 age. No Father in Heaven to pray to, no Jesus 
 on this side, at the edge of the valley, to go all the 
 way through it with you ! Oh, I seem to know how 
 dark the other side, the one they know, must be, 
 from knowing how light is this side! I know as 
 never before how India's poor, ignorant people 
 must suffer, not only from what they have, but from 
 what they have not!" With what emphasis the 
 sick woman spoke. 
 
 ^^Dear one, you are not to feel these things now. 
 You are to get warm and well. See, Anandibai is 
 bringing a good kunda of coals. You shall have it 
 right here. Does it not feel good ? ' ' 
 
 The eager voice was silent and the eyes closed. 
 Now she is speaking again. *^I feel no pain now. 
 I am glad that is over. Sister, those people in the 
 village can not think that there is brightness and 
 greenness after while, that trees are waving whose 
 leaves are for healing, that there is a Son of Right- 
 eousness who can bring warmth and comfort, when 
 the chill is so dreadful. Tell Anandibai, whom we 
 found by the wayside, that she is to be a messen- 
 ger to those without hope when the river is chill. 
 You know the one we sing about in girja (church) — - 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 59 
 
 ^'Gahriri wah nadiya, nawa purani — '' 
 
 *'Yes, dear, *the river is deep and the boat is 
 old, but Jesus will take me across.' You have 
 taught a great many people to sing that. You are 
 to teach many more, we trust. Aren't you get- 
 ting warmer?" 
 
 " It is very cold, little sister. I wish the sun was 
 shining. It seems so dark— ' ' 
 
 Oh, was she to go after all ! The other mission- 
 aries came in and spoke to her. 
 
 **I can not see you, but when I can see, I shall 
 ^see Him as He is.' Tell the people— oh, tell the 
 people so they will have comfort when the river 
 is deep and cold. Bodies are poor things. I am 
 so weak.'* She said no more but to murmur the 
 Hindi work for Jesns—Yisu, Yisu. 
 
 The tropical sun was shining without, bright 
 and warm over a steaming earth, for it was not 
 late in the rainy season. So much warmth with- 
 out and her busy hand so cold and still. '^Bodies 
 are poor things ! ' ' But the soul 's influence was to 
 live. It was to live not only in a land over many 
 seas, but in dark, obscure corners, that no one much 
 <>ared about. In poor little villages by India's 
 waysides. Miserable lepers, dying slowly, would 
 remember that a strange Mem Sahib had come and 
 told them that the soul could escape and go to 
 God. Widows would cherish through many a 
 weary day the memory of a kind-voiced woman 
 who told them there was love for such as them- 
 
60 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 selves, that God loved suffering ones the more 
 tenderly. Many women living narrow, narrow 
 lives had caught a glimpse of freedom that might 
 be theirs in God's kingdom through her words. 
 Men had been told the truth that was able to make 
 them free. Little children, yes, many a little child, 
 had been taught sweet songs by her lips. She was 
 not forty years old, but she had lived long, and 
 well, and she was weary. She did not live to see 
 her work fall from a nerveless hand, to feel that 
 everything was growing and she but a withered 
 bough ; that all were passing by while she sat idle 
 in the race. 
 
 Those who had to hurry her body to the grave 
 where so few English names ever had been or ever 
 would be inscribed could not but think of the 
 morrow and this new empty place they must try 
 to fill. 
 
 The young widow from out India's despised 
 class was the one to say to them : * * She is absent 
 from the body. I feel that she is not absent from 
 the work, because Jesus is here and she is present 
 with Him. I thought and thought about it last 
 night. Don't you believe she can get closer to us- 
 than when her soul was in the body ? Perhaps she 
 will help get our mansions ready, for she knows 
 what we all like. Don't you remember the time 
 she, with her own hands, freshened up all your 
 rooms when you were gone? I remember she put 
 your favorite flowers in your rooms." 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 61 
 
 It was a comfort to hear Anandibai talk of such 
 things so naturally, and we went back to work feel- 
 ing that in some sweet, unseen way her hand was 
 helping. 
 
 The old widow seemed to mourn over the going 
 most of all. The next Christmas day they found 
 a few common flowers tied together with grass, on 
 the table where the ''absent" sister's plate had 
 been, and there were some bright glass bangles 
 under the plate. 
 
 ''Whose gift is this?'' one asked brightly. 
 
 One of the natives of the household answered in 
 an awed tone : " It is for the big sister. The old 
 widow left it for her Christmas gift ! ' ' 
 
 They called the old woman and told her that the 
 dear one who had gone, now had the glory and 
 brightness of heaven, and that she would want 
 them to give what they had to give, to the poor 
 and neglected here. They told her that Jesus said 
 when we have done it unto the least of these we 
 have done it unto Him. 
 
 "Then I know," she said, "I will give them to 
 the sweeper woman; none of the people like her 
 very well. I think she is the 'least.' " 
 
 A "Thank you" went up to the Father that 
 «ven this poor, ignorant old woman understood. 
 
 The youngest missionary once said that some 
 of the sweet surprises that blossomed by the way 
 seemed to her to be flowers from seed the sister who 
 was "absent" had planted. In the village where 
 
62 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 she had gone most often a school was started, and 
 to those in the mission it was always a memorial 
 of the absent one. 
 
 The old pilgrim never came back. Very proba- 
 bly she died in her attempt to reach the Himala- 
 yan shrine. Neither did the young wife who went 
 to find her husband ever return. They are among 
 India's unfound ones. Every year strangers die 
 by the Ganges, and in the crowded places of pil- 
 grimage, but the great, longing multitudes surge 
 on — India's millions! And what will change In- 
 dia ? Not our inventions, for side by side with the 
 newspaper stands in the railway stations is anoth- 
 er, where idols and the paraphernalia of worship 
 gjre for sale. The locomotive engines bear thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands of pilgrims to Baidy- 
 nath, Jagannath, Allahabad and Benares, where 
 the travelers bow down to idols of wood and stone 
 and brass. The telegraph bears messages by its 
 current that are strange to Christian civilization. 
 A man with poo j ah (worship marks) in his fore- 
 head, even 'Hhe mark of the beast,'' may take from 
 his pocket a Waterbury watch to see if it is do 
 pahar (the second watch, or noon). India's kings 
 will yet be using, if they do not already, the auto- 
 mobile to expedite their pilgrimages to inland and 
 remote shrines. Something within must work the 
 change without. Better to give them belief in the 
 Bible than the training of the civil engineer. When 
 once they are true Christians, other learning must 
 
BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 63 
 
 come naturally. They will want to be, and do, and 
 know. The impulse, the power will be there and 
 it will go on when the hands that wrought through 
 it are folded and cold. 
 
 Our day is short. Our time here, * * a little while. ' ' 
 "We can not reach out the helping hand very much 
 longer, and the millions by the wayside do not wait. 
 See them passing by. The coolie with the dulled 
 face. The leper with "the image" almost lost. 
 The widow with scarred body. The frightened lit- 
 tle orphan child. The naked "holy man." The 
 priest with his poojah marks. The burden bearer* 
 with loads upon their heads. The haughty Brah- 
 min with his scroll. The out-caste hastening from 
 the beaten footpaths lest his shadow offend. The 
 beggar who cries in every public place. The dan- 
 cing woman with unholy glance. The aged man 
 or woman with hopeless eyes. The sepoy in his 
 regimentals. The Mohammedan official in English 
 garments, with the exception of his great turban. 
 The fakir of the same class in his yellow robe. The 
 representatives of many divisions and sub-divi- 
 sions of caste. See them pass by, and think how 
 short is their time. Think of villages once swarm- 
 ing with life, now but a sepulcher from plague- 
 and famine. Shall we wait ? 
 
 The Transforming Message is ours, the educa- 
 tion is ours, and the patient working together in 
 systematic giving will bring victory. To lie down 
 at night knowing that we have sent a portion of 
 
64 BY WAYSIDES IN INDIA. 
 
 ourselves and of our effort to take the Gospel of 
 Light, Life and Love to dark, neglected corners, 
 must make our rest sweeter, our awakening more 
 joyous, and our hope more real. 
 
 Sisters, *' bodies are poor things." They fall be- 
 neath the tropical sun. They fail in the dear land 
 of homes. We need to hasten before the soul es- 
 capes, before our *' little while'' is merged into His 
 eternity, and before their *' little while'' flickers 
 ^out in awful fear and doubt. 
 
 Ah, while we wait 
 Sad millions pass into the night, 
 We can not hear the children cry 
 "When ours are laughing in the light! 
 And so we wait 
 V While all the wretched, weary years 
 
 The out-caste trembles by unyielding gates 
 
 The victim of a thousand fears. 
 
 And still we wait — 
 
 And still the hopeless, close sad eyes; 
 
 The mothers are not comforted 
 
 For days and nights are rent with cries! 
 
 And shall we wait 
 
 Until the last soul hurries out 
 
 To darkness and long-dreaded death, 
 
 Tormented by ancestral doubt? 
 
 Ah, can we wait 
 
 And find sweet resting when our day is done 
 
 And know those sighing millions go 
 
 Without one hope at set of sun? 
 

 If 
 
 hdi. 
 
(2j). YC 42998 
 
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