Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/224

208 are many theories in circulation amongst the "vulgar" as to the object of England sending out so many Missionaries to India. The most original and plausible of these is that when an English pair have no children, they pray to their God, just as we pray to our gods here, to grant them at least a son, who, the parents vow, shall devote his life to "preaching Christ" to the perishing millions of heathendom; and God being, inpopular estimation, a sensible sort of a person, never tires of granting such requests.

Infancy and boyhood are a period of severe discipline to the missionary in embryo, and of acute anxiety to the parents who, whatever their means, will not rest till the hopeful is at least an M.A. or B.D. by the time he is twenty-one. Then he comes to India, generally in connection with a school. Immediately on landing he is taken in hand by the Munshi, the Pandit, and the Khabardár or informant. He falls to the work of studying the vernaculars with avidity; and the stories of the Khabardár, too, he swallows with equal zest. In less than two years the padre is monarch of all he surveys. He bears a