Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/530

520 forbidding and manifest fact that to all the other disadvantages of their position as Christians was added the consideration that only a life of celibacy remained to them. They could not return to heathenism for wives, for their friends would not give them; and, even if they did, our Discipline might put them out of the Church for marrying unconverted women; while, on the other hand, we had no Christian families from which they could be supplied. Such were their circumstances and the cheerless future that lay before them. I used to lie awake at night and groan over this aspect of our work, while the way to reach the minds of the women of the land, for want of a female agency, seemed as dark as did the prospects of our converted young men in reference to marriage.

These disabilities hemmed us in on every side, and made the progress and the future of our mission uncertain and doubtful. It was very discouraging. A Christianity without homes, or female schools, or daughters, without wives for our native teachers or preachers, without female worshipers in our congregations, wanted the first elements of perpetuity and completeness.

Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even day scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. They went from house to house, hired a suitable place in which to hold a school, bought mats and necessary equipments, offered even to pay the girls some compensation for the time expended if they would only attend; but at the end of three months they had only succeeded in inducing two children to come, and one of these was unreliable. At length, tired out, they had to abandon the effort as hopeless, until some change would come over the minds of the people in favor of female education.

I well remember what joy there was in November, 1858, when Providence put into our hands the first female orphan we ever received. She was a poor, weak little creature, was blind of an eye, and plain-featured—certainly no beauty; but she was a girl,