Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/159

Rh nel, you must also think in a Tamil channel. The young missionary must at once plunge in, not resolving never to speak till he can speak well—like the simpleton who would not enter the water until he could swim—or he never will speak at all. He must be willing to make mistakes, to be corrected, and, if needs be, laughed at, and told, as the writer has been more than once, “You had better learn our language before you come to preach to us." He must get new words every day, and use them as fast as he gets them; and he will find, month by month, that it becomes less a task and more a pleasure to make known to these poor dying heathen in their own tongue the way of forgiveness and everlasting life. An interpreter is a miserable substitute for your own tongue, and, to most men, a damper to all enthusiasm. To speak to a strange people in their own language warms and delights the speaker, while it pleases, conciliates, and attracts the hearers. Five words of love from your own lips are worth fifty from those of an interpreter.

The Tamil language has a highly-wrought grammar, is refined and accurate, and possesses a literature which it would take a lifetime to read. Though difficult of acquisition, it is Rh