to the treachery of spies, and three English merchants were fixed upon as
those spies and put under arrest. The King was advised likewise to
secure the persons of the missionaries, but he answered, "They are quiet
men; let them alone." Unfortunately, however, a receipt for some money
paid to Adoniram Judson was found among the papers of one of the
merchants, and this to the Burmese mind was proof of his complicity in
the plot. Suddenly, an official, accompanied by a dozen men, one of whom
had his face marked with spots, to denote his being an executioner, made
his appearance demanding Mr. Judson. "You are called by the King," said
the official, and at the same moment the executioner produced a cord,
threw Mr. Judson on the floor, and tied his arms behind his back. His
wife vainly offered money to have his arms unbound, and he was led away,
the faithful Ing following at a distance to see what was done with him,
while Mrs. Judson retired to her room and poured out her soul "to Him who
for our sakes was bound and led away to execution," and great was her
comfort even in that moment. She was immediately after summoned to be
examined by a magistrate in the verandah, and after hastily destroying
all journals and papers, went out to meet him. He took down her name and
age, those of four little Burmese girls she had charge of, and of two
Bengal servants; pronounced them all slaves to the King, and set a guard
over them. Mrs. Judson fastened herself and her children into the inner
room, while the guards threatened her savagely if she would not show
herself, and even put her servants' feet in the stocks till she had
obtained their release by promises of money.
Moung Ing had ascertained that his master was in prison; and when, after
the most dreadful night she had ever spent, she sent him again in the
morning, with a piece of silver to obtain admittance, he brought word
that both Judson and Price, with the three English merchants, were in the
death-prison, each wearing three pairs of iron fetters and fastened to a
long pole. Mrs. Judson immediately sent to the governor of the city with
an entreaty to be allowed to visit him with a present. This procured her
a favourable reception, and he promised to make the condition of the
prisoners more comfortable, but told her that she must consult his head
writer as to the means. This man, a brutal-looking fellow, extorted from
her a huge bribe, and then promised to release the two teachers from the
pole, and to put them into another building where she might send them
food daily, and pillows and mats to sleep on. She obtained an order for
an interview with her husband, whose looks were so wretched and ghastly
that she lost no time in fulfilling these exorbitant demands.
Her hope was in a petition to the Queen, but being under arrest herself,
she could not go to the Queen in person, and had to approach her through
her sister-in-law--a proud, haughty dame, who received her in the most
cold, discouraging manner, but who undertook to present the petition. She
then went to the prison again, but the head writer would not allow her to
enter; and on her return home she found that all the property in the
mission-house was to undergo a scrutiny; but this was humanely done, and
was only inventoried, not seized--_i.e._ the King did not seize it, but
the officials helped themselves to whatever took their fancy. The next
day the Queen's answer was obtained--"He is not to be executed; let him
remain where he is."
The poor lady's heart fainted within her, but she thought of the widow
and the unjust judge, and persevered day after day in applying to every
member of the royal family or of Government to entreat for her husband's
liberation. The King's mother, sisters, and brother were all interested
in his favour, but none of them ventured to apply direct to the King lest
they should offend the favourite Queen. All failed, but the hopes that
from time to time were excited, kept up the spirits of the sufferers.
During the long weary months while the missionaries continued in fetters,
_i.e._ chained by the feet to a bar of bamboo, Mrs. Judson was often not
allowed to visit them for ten days at a time, and then only by walking to
the prison after dark, two miles, unattended. She could, however,
communicate with her husband by means of the provisions she sent him
daily. At first she used to write on the dough of a flat cake, which she
afterwards baked and concealed in a bowl of rice, while he answered by
writing on a tile, where the inscription disappeared when dry but was
visible when wet; but latterly they found it most convenient to write on
a roll of paper hidden in the long nose of a coffee-pot, in which tea was
sent to the prisoners.
Mrs. Judson delighted to send him little surprises, once a mince-pie,
which Moung Ing carried with the utmost pride to his imprisoned master.
Mrs. Judson found herself obliged to wear the native dress, though she
was so much taller than the Burmese women that she could be hardly taken
for one of them. It was a becoming dress; her hair was drawn into a knot
on the forehead, with a cocoa-blossom, like a white plume, drooping from
it; a saffron vest open in front to show a crimson tunic below; and a
tight skirt of rich silk, sloping down behind, made her look to
advantage, so that her husband liked to remember her as she stood at his
prison door. She never was allowed to come further.
For twenty days she was absent, and then she came with a tiny, pale,
wailing, blue-eyed baby on her breast. Poor Judson, clanking up to the
door in his chains to welcome his little daughter, commemorated his
feelings in some touching verses ending:--
"And when in future years
Thou know'st thy father's tongue,
These lines will show thee how he felt,
How o'er his babe he sung."
Every defeat by the European forces added to the perils of captives. A
favourite old general named Bundoolah had promised, when sent to command
the army against Rangoon, that he would release all the white prisoners
on his return as a conqueror; and when he was totally defeated, the wrath
of the Burmese was so great that at this time the King himself seems to
have scarcely acted at all. He was gentle, indolent and indifferent,
more intelligent than those around him, scarcely a Buddhist in belief,
and very kind-hearted: indeed Judson believed that it was his
interposition alone that prevented the lives of the captives from being
taken at once; but he was demoralized by self-indulgence, and allowed
himself to be governed by his queen, the daughter of a superintendent of
gaols; and through her, by her brother, who was cruel, rapacious and
violent, and the chief author of all the sufferings inflicted on the
prisoners. Among these were seven or eight British officers, and the
King had commanded that a daily allowance of rice should be served to
these, but scarcely half of it ever reached them; Mrs. Judson did her
best to supply them as well as her husband, but their health gave way
under their sufferings, and all died but one.
At the end of seven months, it was reported that the English army was
advancing into the interior; and in the passionate alarm thus excited,
the English captives were all loaded with five pairs of fetters and
thrown into the common prison among Burman thieves and robbers,--a
hundred in a room without a window, and that in the hottest season of the
year. Mrs. Judson again besought the governor to relieve them from this
horrible condition, by at least allowing them to sit outside the door,
and he actually shed tears at her distress, but he told her that he had
been commanded to put them all to death privately, and that he was doing
his best for them by massing them with the rest. The Queen's brother had
really given this order, but the governor delayed the execution in case
they should be required of him by the King, and they continued in this
frightful state for a whole month, until Mr. Judson sickened with violent
fever, and the governor permitted him to be removed into a little bamboo
room, six feet long and four wide, where his wife was allowed to visit
him and bring him food and medicine, she meantime living in a bamboo
house in the governor's compound, where the thermometer rose daily to 106
degrees, but where she thought herself happy as she saw her husband begin
to recover.
One day, however, when the governor had sent for her and was kindly
conversing with her, a servant came in and whispered to him that the
white strangers had suddenly been taken away, no one knew whither. The
governor pretended to be taken by surprise, but there could be no doubt
that he had occupied Mrs. Judson to hinder her from witnessing the
removal; and it was not till the evening that she learnt that the
prisoners had been taken to Umerapoonah, whither she proceeded with her
three months old baby and one servant. There she found that the
prisoners had been sent on two hours before to a sort of penal settlement
called Oung-pen-lay, whither she followed, to find her husband in a
lamentable state. He had been dragged out of his little room, allowed no
clothing but his shirt and trowsers, a rope had been tied round his
waist, and he had been literally driven ten miles in the hottest part of
the day. His feet were so lacerated that he was absolutely falling, when
a servant of one of the merchants tore a piece from his turban, and this
wrapped round his feet enabled him to proceed, but he could not stand for
six weeks after; indeed the scars remained for life. In this state he
lay chained to Dr. Price. The intention was to sacrifice them both, in
order to obtain success for an intended expedition; but before this could
be done, a different woongye, or prime minister, came in, and their
condition was somewhat improved, for they only wore one bamboo, through
two slits in which their feet were forced, and they were allowed to crawl
into the enclosure. Meantime, a poor lion, once a great favourite, which
was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was
placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to
death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase
was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the
reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him
his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in
his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal.
The faithful Ing, thinking only to secure a relic of his master, had
picked up the pillow and secured the treasure.
Solitude was the greatest boon to Judson, whose fastidious delicacy
suffered greatly in the thronged prison, but his faithful Ann was
suffering terribly. One of the little Burmese girls who lived with her
had caught the small-pox, and was very ill: Mrs. Judson inoculated the
other child and her own little Maria, but Maria's inoculation did not
take effect, and she caught the disease, and had it very severely. Then
Mrs. Judson herself fell ill of a fever, and remained for two months
unable to visit her husband, both of them owing all their food to the
exertions of their good Bengalee cook. Poor little Maria was nearly
starved, no milk was to be had, and the only food she obtained was when
the jailers were bribed to let her father carry her round the village to
beg a little nourishment from the nursing mothers. Her moans at night
rent the heart of her sick mother, and it is scarcely possible to imagine
how either survived. By this time, the English troops were so far
advancing that the King was reduced to negotiate, and, being in need of
an interpreter, he sent an order for Mr. Judson's release; but as his
wife was not named in it, she had great difficulty in effecting her
departure, and half-way through the journey a guard came down and carried
him off to Ava without her. Arriving next day, she found him in prison,
but under orders to embark in a little boat and go at once to the camp at
Maloun. She hastened to prepare all that was needful for his comfort,
but all was stolen except a mattress, pillow, and one blanket. The boat
had no awning, and was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for
the three days and three nights of alternate scorching heat and heavy
dew; there was no food but a bag of refuse-rice, and the banks on either
side of the Irrawaddy were bordered with glittering white sand, which in
sunlight emitted a metallic glare intolerable to the eyes, and heat like
a burning furnace. The fever returned upon Judson, and, when he reached
Maloun, he was almost helpless; but he found himself lodged in a small
bamboo hut in the middle of the white sand, where he could not admit air
by rolling up the matting without letting in the distressing glare, and
where the heat reflected from the sand was like a furnace. He could not
stir when the officers came to summon him to the presence of the Burmese
general, and they thought it stubbornness, and threatened him; then they
brought him papers and commanded him to translate them, while he writhed
in torture and only longed that the fever in his brain would deprive him
of his senses. This it must have done, for he had only a confused
impression of feet around him, and of fancying that he was going to be
burnt alive, until he found himself on a bed in a somewhat cooler room.
As he lay there, papers were continually brought him to explain and
translate, and he found that the greatest difficulty was in making the
Burmese understand that a State paper could mean what it said, or that
truth and honesty were possible. Sometimes, as he tried to explain the
commonest principle: of good faith and fair dealing among Christian
nations, his auditors would exclaim, "That is noble," "That is as it
should be;" but then they would shake their heads and say, "The teacher
dreams; he has a heavenly spirit, and so he thinks himself in the land of
the dwellers in heaven."
He remained here six weeks, suffering much at night from cold, for his
only covering was a small rug and his well-worn blanket. Then, on the
advance of the English, he was sent back to Ava, but was marched straight
to the court-house without being suffered to halt for a moment at his own
abode, to discover whether his wife was there. He was placed in a shed,
guarded all day, and left without food, till Moung Ing found him out in
the evening, and replied to his questions, that the Mamma Judson and the
child were well; yet there was something about his manner that was
unsatisfactory, and Judson, thinking it over, became terribly uneasy, and
in the morning, being sent for by the governor of the jail, obtained
permission to go to his own house.
At the door he saw a fat, half-naked Burmese woman with a child in her
arms, so dark with dirt that it never occurred to him that it could be
his own; and entering, he found, lying across the foot of the bed, his
wife, ghastly white and emaciated, her hair all cut away, and her whole
appearance that of a corpse. She woke as he knelt down by her in
despair! She had been ill all this time with a horrible spotted fever.
The day she had fallen ill, the Burmese woman had offered to take charge
of little Maria, and the Bengalee cook had attended on her. Dr. Price
was released from prison and had cut off her hair, bled, and blistered
her, but she could hardly move when the tidings came of her husband being
in the town, and she had sent Moung Ing to him. The husband and wife
were at last together again, and Dr. Price was sent to conduct the treaty
at the English camp.
As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell heard of the sufferings of the Judsons,
he demanded them as well as the English subjects; but the King was aware
that they were not English, and would not let them go. This attempt at a
treaty failed; but its failure, and the alarm consequent upon a report of
the advance of the English, led to Mr. Judson's being sent off, almost by
force, with two officials, to promise a ransom if Ava were spared. Sir
Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked,
provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among
these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all
foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay. Some of the
officials tried to persuade Mr. Judson to stay, declaring that he would
become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after
such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding
himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby,
made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery.
They were received with courtesy, and indeed with gratitude, respect, and
veneration at the English camp. The Englishmen who had been in captivity
bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs. Judson had relieved their
wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food,
mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her
arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not
only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of
accepting the British terms of peace.
These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese
territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava;
for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the
Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they
would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in
the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not
make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such
a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her
strength for every sufferer who came in her way.
There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners,
in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish.
When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs. Judson on his arm, and seated her
by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the
guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had
treated her ill. "That fellow with the pointed beard," he said, "seems
taken with an ague fit." Then Mrs. Judson told how, when her husband lay
in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several
miles with a petition to this man, had been kept waiting till the
noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she
departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness;
and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with,
the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be
in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their
countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese,
who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in
the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and
trembled visibly. Mrs. Judson kindly turned to them with a smile,
assuring them that they had nothing to fear, and, on repeating her words
to Sir Archibald Campbell, he confirmed them to the frightened
barbarians.
That visit to the English camp was one of the few spaces of comfort or
repose in those busy lives. It concluded by the husband and wife being
forwarded to their old home at Rangoon.
It was in the height of the war, when anxieties for the fate of Mr. and
Mrs. Judson were at the utmost, that, on the 4th of July, 1825, George
Boardman and Sarah Hall were married, and sailed for Calcutta, thinking
it possible that they might find their predecessors martyred, and that
they were coming "to step where their comrades stood."
At Calcutta they found Mr. and Mrs. Wade, who had with great difficulty
escaped, and soon after they heard of the rescue of the Judsons, and
welcomed Dr. Price. Rangoon, in the meantime, had been occupied by the
English, and then besieged by the Peguans; the mission-house was ruined,
and the people dispersed, and Moung Shwaygnong had died of cholera,
faithful to the last. The city was to be restored to the Burmese, and
the King, though willing to employ Judson politically, refused toleration
to his subjects; so that, as the provinces on the Martaban river were to
be ceded to the English, it seemed wise to take advantage of the
reputation which the Judsons had established to found a mission-station
under their protection in the new town of Amherst, which Sir Archibald
Campbell proposed to build on the banks of the Martaban river.
Hither was transported the old zayat of Rangoon; and Mount Ing, Moung
Shwaba, and a few other of the flock accompanied their teachers, to form
the nucleus of the mission. Sir Archibald Campbell had made a great
point of Mr. Judson's accompanying the English embassy that was to
conclude the treaty at Ava; and he, hoping to obtain something for the
Christian cause, complied, leaving that most brave and patient woman, his
wife, with her little delicate girl, in a temporary house in Amherst,
which, as yet, consisted only of barracks, officers' houses, and fifty
native huts by the riverside in the space of freshly-cleared jungle.
There she set to work with energy that enfeebled health could not daunt,
to prepare the way for the Wades and the Boardmans, to superintend a
little school, of which Moung Ing was master, and to have a house built
for her husband.
She had just moved into it, when she was attacked with remittent fever,
and, though attended by an English army surgeon and nursed by a soldier's
wife, she sank under it, and died on the 24th of October, 1826. She was
buried under a _hopia_, or, as her friends loved to call it, a hope tree;
and the Wades, coming shortly after, took charge of poor little Maria,
who lived to be embraced by her father, on his arrival after three
months' absence; but she continued to pine away, and only survived her
mother six months.
Judson endured patiently, thought of his wife's sufferings as gems in her
crown, wrote cheerful letters, and toiled indefatigably, without breaking
down, but he was never the same man again. Amherst was probably
unhealthy, for several of the Rangoon converts died there, among them one
of the little Burmese girls who had been with Mrs. Judson throughout her
troubles. Those who died almost always spoke with joy of their hope of
seeing Mamma Judson in heaven. "But first," said one woman, "I shall
fall down before the Saviour's feet, and thank Him for sending us our
teachers."
It was shortly before little Maria's death that Mr. and Mrs. Boardman
arrived, bringing with them a daughter born at Calcutta. Moulmein, the
town near at hand, was decided on as their station, and they removed to a
mission-house on the border of the jungle, about a mile from the
cantonments, with a beautiful range of hills behind them, and the river
in front. Opposite lay the Burman province of Martaban, which had been
desolated during the war, and was now the haunt of terrible Malay
pirates, who came and robbed in the town, and then fled securely to the
opposite bank, where they could not be pursued. The English officers had
entreated the Boardmans to reside within the cantonments, but they wished
to be among the people, so as to learn the language more readily and
become acquainted with them.
One night, Mrs. Boardman awoke and found the lamp gone out. She rose and
re-lighted it. Every box and drawer lay overthrown and rifled, nothing
left but what the thieves deemed not worth taking. She turned round to
the mosquito curtain which concealed her husband; it was cut by two long
gashes, the one close to his head, the other to his feet. There the
robber-sentry must have kept watch, ready to destroy the sleepers if they
had wakened for a moment! Nearly every valuable had been carried away,
and not a trace of any was ever found. After this, Sir Archibald
Campbell gave them a Sepoy guard; and, as population increased, the
danger diminished. Indeed, Amherst proved an unsuccessful attempt, and
was gradually abandoned in favour of Moulmein, which became the
head-quarters both of Government and of the Mission.
The Boardmans were specially devoted to that, because of the work which
regarded the Karens. These were a wandering race who occupied a strip of
jungle, a hilly country to the south of Burmah, living chiefly by hunting
and fishing, making canoes, and clothed in cotton cloth. They had very
scanty ideas either of religion or civilization, but were not idolaters,
and had a good many of what Judson calls the gentler virtues of savages,
though their habits were lazy and dirty. They had been a good deal
misused by the Burmese, but occasionally wandered into the cities; and
there Judson had asked questions about them which had roused the interest
of his Burman converts. During the war, one of these Burmese found a
poor Karen, named Ko-Thah-byoo, in bondage for debt, paid the amount,
made him his own servant, and, on the removal to Moulmein, brought him
thither. He proved susceptible of instruction, and full of energy and
zeal; and not only embraced Christianity heartily himself, but introduced
it to his tribe, and assisted the missionaries in acquiring the language.
To be nearer to these people, the Boardmans removed to Tavoy, where they
had a Burmese congregation; and Mr. Boardman made an expedition among the
Karens, who were, for the most part, by no means unwilling to listen, and
with little tradition to pre-occupy their minds, as well as intelligence
enough to receive new ideas. At one place, the people were found devoted
to an object that was thought to have magic power, and which they kept
with great veneration, wrapt up in many coverings. It proved to be an
English Common Prayer Book, printed at Oxford, which had been left behind
by a Mahometan traveller. On the whole, this has been a flourishing
mission; the Karens were delighted to have their language reduced to
writing, and the influence of their teachers began to raise them in the
scale; but all was done under the terrible drawback of climate. Mrs.
Boardman never was well from the time she landed at Moulmein, and her
beautiful flower-covered house at Tavoy was the constant haunt of
sickness, under which her elder child, Sarah, died, after showing all
that precocity that white children often do in these fatal regions. A
little boy named George had by this time been born, and shared with his
mother the dangers of the Tavoy rebellion, an insurrection stirred up by
a prince of the Burmese royal blood, in hopes of wresting the province
from the English.
One night, a Burmese lad belonging to the school close to the Boardmans'
house, was awakened by steps; and, peeping through the braided bamboo
walls of his hut, saw parties of men talking in an undertone about lost
buffaloes. Some went into the town, others gathered about the gate, and,
when their numbers began to thicken, a cloud of smoke was seen in the
morning dawn, and yells from a thousand voices proclaimed, "Tavoy has
risen!"
Boardman awoke and rushed out to the door, but a friendly voice told him
that no harm was intended him. The revolt was against the English, and
never was a movement more perilous. The commandant, Colonel Burney, was
absent at Moulmein, the English officer next in command was ill of a
fatal disease, the gunner was ill, and the whole defence of a long,
straggling city was in the hands of a hundred Sepoys, commanded by a very
young surgeon, assisted by Mrs. Burney, who had a babe of three weeks
old. The chief of the fight was at the powder magazine, not very far
from the Boardmans' abode. It was attacked by two hundred men with
clubs, knives, spears, but happily with very few muskets, and defended by
only six Sepoys, who showed great readiness and faithfulness. Just as
their bullets seemed to be likely to endanger the frightened little
family, a savage-looking troop of natives were seen consulting, with
threatening gestures aimed at the mission-house, and Mr. Boardman, fully
expecting to be massacred, made his wife and her baby hide in a little
shed, crouching to escape the bullets; but this alarm passed off, and, at
the end of an hour, the whole of the gates had been regained by the
Sepoys, and the attack on the magazine repulsed. Mr. Boardman took this
opportunity of carrying his family to the Government house, where they
were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Burney; but it was impossible to continue
the defence of so large an extent as the town occupied, and therefore the
tiny garrison decided on retiring to a large wooden building on the
wharf, whither the Sepoys conveyed three cannon and as much powder as
they expected to want, throwing the rest down wells. This was not done
without constant skirmishing, and was not completed till three o'clock,
when the refugees were collected,--namely, a hundred Sepoys, with their
wives and children, stripped of all their ornaments, which they had
buried; some Hindoo and Burmese servants; a few Portuguese traders; a
wily old Mussulman; Mrs. Boardman and Mrs. Burney, each with her baby;
and seven Englishmen besides Mr. Boardman. Among them rode the ghastly
figure of the sick officer, who had been taken from his bed, but who
hoped to encourage his men by appearing on horseback; but his almost
orange skin, wasted form, sunken eyes, and perfect helplessness, were to
Mrs. Boardman even more terrible than the yells of the insurgents around
and the shots of their scanty escort.
Three hundred persons were crowded together in the wooden shed, roofed
over, and supported on posts above the water, with no partitions. The
situation was miserable enough, but they trusted that the enemy, being
only armed with spears, could not reach them. By and by, however, the
report of a cannon dismayed them. The jingals, or small field-pieces,
were brought up, but not till evening; and the inexperienced rebels took
such bad aim that all the balls passed over the wharf into the sea, and
the dense darkness put a stop to the attempt; but all night the trembling
inmates were awakened by savage yells; and a Sepoy, detecting a spark of
light through the chinks of the floor, fired, and killed an enemy who had
come beneath in a boat to set fire to the frail shelter!
In the morning the firing from the walls was renewed, but at long
intervals, for there was a great scarcity of powder, though the unhappy
besieged apprehended every moment that the right direction would be hit
upon, and then that the balls would be among them. They could send
nowhere for help, though there was a Chinese junk within their reach, for
it could not put to sea under the fire of the rebels; and two more days,
and two still more terrible nights, passed in what must have been almost
a black hole. The fifth night was the worst of all, for the town was set
on fire around, and by the light of the flames the enemy made a furious
attack; but just in time to prevent the fire from attaining the frail
wooden structure, a providential storm quenched it, and the muskets of
the Sepoys again repulsed the enemy. By this time the provisions were
all but exhausted, and there were few among even the defenders who were
not seriously ill from the alternate burning sun and drenching rain.
Death seemed hovering over the devoted wharf from every quarter; when at
last, soon after sunrise on the fifth day, the young doctor quietly
beckoned the Colonel's wife to the door that opened upon the sea, and
pointed to the horizon, where a little cloudy thread of smoke was rising.
It was the steamer bringing Colonel Burney back, in perfect ignorance of
the peril of Tavoy and of his wife! But he understood all at a glance.
The women and children were instantly transferred to the steamer, and she
was sent back to Moulmein, but Colonel Burney and the few men who came
with him landed, and restored courage and spirit to the besieged. Not
only was a breastwork thrown up to protect the wharf, but the Colonel led
a trusty little band of Sepoys to the wall where the cannon stood,
recaptured them, and had absolutely regained Tavoy before the tidings of
the insurrection had reached Moulmein. Mrs. Burney's babe died soon
after the steamer had brought the two mothers and their infants to their
refuge; but little George Boardman did not suffer any ill effects from
these dreadful days and nights, and was, in fact, the only child of his
patents who outlived infancy. Another son, born a few months afterwards,
soon ended a feeble existence, and Mrs. Boardman was ill for many months.
Her husband, delicate from the first, never entirely recovered the
sufferings at the wharf; yet in spite of an affection of the lungs, he
would often walk twenty miles a day through the Karen villages, teaching
and preaching, and at night have no food but rice, and sleep on a mat on
the floor of an open zayat.
The Moulmein station was a comparative rest, and the husband and wife
removed thither to supply the place of Judson and of the Wades, who were
making another attempt upon Burmah Proper; the Wades taking up their
residence at Rangoon, and Judson going on to Prome, the ancient capital,
where he preached in the zayats, distributed tracts, and argued with the
teachers in his old fashion; but the Ava Government had become far more
suspicious, and interfered as soon as he began to make anything like
progress, requesting the English officer now in residence at the Court to
remonstrate with him, and desire him not to proceed further than Rangoon.
He was obliged to yield, and again to float down the river in his little
boat, baffled, but patient and hopeful.
A great change had come upon the bright, enthusiastic, lively young man
who had set out, with his beautiful Ann, to explore the unknown Eastern
world. Suffering of body had not altered him so much as bereavement, and
bereavement without rest in which to face and recover the shock. A
strong ascetic spirit was growing on him. Already on his first return to
Moulmein, after joining in the embassy, he had thought it right to cut
short the ordinary intercourse of society, to which his residence in the
camp had given rise, and had announced his intention in a letter to Sir
Archibald Campbell. He was much regretted, for he was a particularly
agreeable man; and it is evident, both from all testimony and from the
lively tone of his letters, that he was full of good-natured sympathy,
and, however sad at heart, was a cheerful and even merry companion.
But through these years, throughout constant care and unrelaxed activity
of mind and body, his heart was aching for the wife he had no time to
mourn; and the agony thus suppressed led to an utter loathing for all
that he thought held him back from perfect likeness to the glorified
Saint whom he loved. He took delight in the most spiritual mystical
writings he could find,--a Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and the
like,--and endeavoured to fulfil the Gospel measure of holiness. He gave
up his whole patrimony to the American Baptist Mission Board (now
separate from England and Serampore), mortified to the very utmost his
fastidious delicacy by ministering to the most loathsome diseases; and to
crush his love of honour, he burnt a letter of thanks for his services
from the Governor-General of India, and other documents of the same kind.
He fasted severely, and having by nature a peculiar horror of the decay
and mouldering of death, he deemed it pride and self-love, and dug a
grave beside which he would sit meditating on the appearance of the body
after death. He had a bamboo hermitage on the borders of the jungle,
where he would live on rice for weeks together--only holding converse
with those who came to him for religious instruction; and once, when worn
out with his work of translation, he went far into the depths of the
wildest jungle, near a deserted pagoda, and there sat down to read, pray,
and meditate. The next day, on returning to the spot, he found a seat of
bamboo, and the branches woven together for a shelter. Judson never
learnt whose work this was, but it was done by a loving disciple, who had
overcome the fear of tigers to provide by night for his comfort, though
the place was thought so dangerous that his safety, during the forty days
that he haunted it, was viewed by the natives as a miracle. He spent
several months in retirement. It was indeed four years after his
bereavement, but it is plain that he was taking the needful rest and calm
that his whole nature required after the shock that he had undergone, but
which he had in a manner deferred until the numbers of workers were so
increased that his constant labour could be dispensed with. He came
forth from his retirement renovated in spirit, for the second period of
his toils.
Meantime, the Boardmans had returned to Tavoy, where they were eagerly
welcomed by their Karen flock, and found many candidates for baptism.
Weak as he was, Mr. Boardman examined them. He was sometimes able to sit
up in his chair and speak for himself, but oftener so weak that his wife
sat on his couch and interpreted his feeble whispers; but he was so happy
that tears of joy often filled his eyes. The actual baptism, performed
by going down into the water like Philip with the Ethiopian, could hardly
have been carried out by a man in his state; but Moung Ing, who had been
admitted to the pastorate, touched at Moulmein, on a mission to Mergui,
and undertook the baptisms. The Karens carried Mr. Boardman to the water
in his cot, along a street filled with lamaseries, whence the
yellow-clothed priests looked down in scorn, and the common people hooted
and reviled: "See! see your teacher, a living man borne as if he were
already dead!" with still worse unfeeling taunts. The Christians, about
fifty in number, reached the spot, a beautiful lake, nearly a mile in
circumference, and bordered by green grass overshadowed by trees. There
they all knelt down and prayed, and then Moung Ing baptized the nineteen
new disciples, while the pastor lay pale and happy, and his wife watched
him with her heart full of the last baptism, when it had been he who
poured the water and spoke the words.
Mr. Boardman lived on into the year 1831, and welcomed a new arrival from
America, Francis Mason and his wife, on the 23rd of January, and a week
later set out to introduce the former to the Karens, a band of whom had
come down to convey the party. Mr. Boardman was carried on his bed, his
wife in a chair, and on the third day they reached a spot where the
Karens, of their own accord, had erected a bamboo chapel beside a
beautiful stream beneath a range of mountains. Nearly a hundred had
assembled there, of whom half were candidates for baptism. They cooked,
ate, and slept in the open air, but they had made a small shed for Mr.
Mason, and another for the Boardmans, too small to stand upright in, and
so ill-enclosed as to be exposed to sun by day and cold air by night.
The sufferer rapidly became worse, but he had an ardent desire to see
this last baptism, and all the thirty-four women, who were sufficiently
prepared, were baptized in his sight, though he was so spent as scarcely
to be able to breathe without the fan and smelling-bottle. In the
evening he contrived to speak a few words of exhortation to the
disciples, and to give them each a tract or a portion of Scripture. The
next morning the party set out on their return, but in the afternoon were
overtaken by a great storm of thunder and lightning, with rain that
drenched his mattress and pillows; and when they reached a house, they
found it belonged to heathens, who would scarcely let the strange teacher
lie in the verandah.
His cot was so wet that he was forced to lie on the bamboo floor, and the
rain continued all night. A boat was expected at twelve the next day,
and it was resolved to wait for this, while the Tavoyans looked grimly
on, and refused even to sell a chicken to make broth for the sick man. By
nine o'clock he was evidently dying, and the Karens rubbed his hands and
feet as they grew cold. Almost immediately after being conveyed to the
boat, the last struggles came on, and in a few minutes he had passed
away. He was buried at Tavoy, beside his little Sarah; all the Europeans
in the town attending, as well as a grateful multitude of Burmese and
Karens.
"The tree to which the frail creeper clung
Still lifts its stately head,
But he, on whom my spirit hung,
Is sleeping with the dead,"
wrote Sarah Boardman; and her first thought was of course to go home with
her child, but the Masons had not learnt the languages, and had no
experience, and, without her, there would be no schools, no possibility
of instruction for the converts of either people until they could speak
freely, and she therefore resolved not to desert her work. She was
keeping school, attending to all comers, and interpreting from sunrise
till ten o'clock at night, besides having the care of her little boy, and
her schools were so good that, when the British Government established
some, orders were given for conducting them on the same system.
She tried to learn Karen, but never had time, and it was the less needful
that a little Burmese was known to some Karens, and thus she could always
have an interpreter. She sometimes made mission tours to keep up the
spirit of the Karens till Mr. Mason should be qualified to come among
them. Her little George was carried by her attendants, and there is a
note to Mrs. Mason, sent back from one of the stages of her journey,
which shows what her travels must have been: "Perhaps you had better send
the chair, as it is convenient to be carried over the streams when they
are deep. You will laugh when I tell you that I have forded all the
smaller ones." But there is scarcely any record of these journeys of
hers, she was too modest and shy to dwell on what only related to
herself; and though she several times, with the help of her Burmese
interpreter, led the devotions of two or three hundred Karens, it was
always with a sense of reluctance, and only under necessity.
She had been a widow four years, when Adoniram Judson, who had returned
from Rangoon, and was about to take charge of the station at Moulmein,
made her his second wife, on the 10th of April, 1834. At the same time,
an opportunity offered of sending little George back to America for
education; but year after year filled the house at Moulmein with other
little ones,--careful comforts, in that fatal climate, which had begun to
tell on the health of both the parents. Pain and sorrow went for little
with this devoted pair. To be as holy as the Apostles though without
their power, was the endeavour which Judson set before himself, and the
work of such a man was one of spirit that drew all to hear and follow
him. The Burmese converts were numbered by hundreds, and one of the
missionaries in the Karen country could write: "I no longer date from a
heathen land. Heathenism has fled from these banks; I eat the rice and
fruits cultivated by Christian hands, look on the fields of Christians,
see no dwellings but those of Christian families. I am seated in the
midst of a Christian village, surrounded by a people that live as
Christians, converse as Christians, act as Christians, and, to my eyes,
look like Christians."
All this, like every other popular conversion, involved many individual
disappointments from persons not keeping up to the Christian standard,
and from coolness setting in when the excitement of the change was over;
and great attention had to be paid to rules, discipline, &c., as well as
to providing books and schools. Judson himself had to work hard at the
completion and correction of the Burmese Bible, to which he devoted
himself, the more entirely because an affection of the throat and cough
came on, and for some time prevented him from preaching. In 1839, he
tried to alleviate it by a voyage to Calcutta, where he was received by
both Bishop Wilson and by the Marshman family at Serampore; but, as he
observes, "the glory of Serampore had departed," and his stay there must
have been full of sad associations. His work upon the Scriptures was
finished in 1840, and he then began a complete Burmese dictionary, while
his wife was translating the Pilgrim's Progress; but both were completely
shattered in health, and their children, four in number, had all been
brought low by the hooping cough, and then by other complaints. A voyage
to Calcutta was imperatively enjoined on all; but it was stormy and full
of suffering, and soon after they arrived at Serampore their youngest
child, little Henry, died. A still further voyage was thought advisable,
and the whole family went as far as the Isle of France, where they
recovered some measure of health, and their toil at Moulmein was resumed.
Four more years passed, three more children were born, and then the
strength that had been for nineteen years so severely tried, gave way,
and the doctors pronounced that Sarah Judson's life could only be saved
by a voyage to America. The three elder children were to go with her,
but the three little ones were to remain, since their father only
intended to go as far as the Isle of France, and then return to his
labour. The last words she ever wrote were pencilled on a slip of paper,
intended to be given to him to comfort him at their farewell:--
"We part on this green islet, love:
Thou for the Eastern main,
I for the setting sun, love;
Oh! when to meet again?
My heart is sad for thee, love,
For lone thy way will be;
And oft thy tears will fall, love,
For thy children and for me.
The music of thy daughter's voice
Thou'lt miss for many a year,
And the merry shout of thine elder boys
Thou'lt list in vain to hear.
* * * * *
Yet my spirit clings to thine, love,
Thy soul remains with me,
And oft we'll hold communion sweet
O'er the dark and distant sea.
And who can paint our mutual joy
When, all our wanderings o'er,
We both shall clasp our infants three
At home on Burmah's shore?
But higher shall our raptures glow
On yon celestial plain,
When the loved and parted here below
Meet, ne'er to part again.
Then gird thine armour on, love,
Nor faint thou by the way
Till Boodh shall fall, and Burmah's sons
Shall own Messiah's sway."
What a trumpet-note for a soldier to leave after nineteen years service
"through peril, toil, and pain," undaunted to the last! For by the time
the ship left the Isle of France, she was fading so rapidly that her
husband could not quit her, and sailed on with her to St. Helena. She
was fast dying, but so composed about her children, that some one
observed that she seemed to have forgotten the three babes. "Can a
mother forget?" was all her answer. She died on board the ship, at
anchor in the bay of St. Helena, and was carried to the burial-ground,
where all the colonial clergy in the island attended, and she was laid
beside Mrs. Chater, the wife of that Serampore missionary whose expulsion
had led to the first pioneering at Rangoon, and who had since worked in
Ceylon. She was just forty-two, and died September 1st, 1845.
Her husband found her beautiful farewell; and, as he copied it out, he
wrote after the last verse, "Gird thine armour on," "And so, God willing,
I will yet endeavour to do; and while her prostrate form finds repose on
the rock of the ocean, and her sanctified spirit enjoys sweeter repose on
the bosom of JESUS, let me continue to toil on all my appointed time,
until my change too shall come."
On the evening of the day of her burial, he sailed with the three
children, and arrived at Boston on the 15th of October, 1845. He
remained in his native country only nine months, and, if a universal
welcome could have delighted him, he received it to the utmost. So
little did he know of his own fame, that, returning after thirty years,
he had been in pain to know where to procure a night's lodging at Boston,
whereas he found half the city ready to compete for the honour of
receiving him, and every one wanted to meet him. Places of worship where
he was to preach were thronged, and every public meeting where he was
expected to speak was fully attended; but all this fervour of welcome was
a distress to him, his affection of the throat made oratory painful and
often impossible, and the mere going silently to an evening assembly so
excited his nerves that he could not sleep for the whole night after. Any
sort of display was misery to him; he could not bear to sit still and
hear the usual laudation of his achievements; and, when distinguished and
excellent men were introduced to him, he received them with chilling
shyness and coldness, too humble to believe that it was for his goodness
and greatness that they sought to know him, but fancying it was out of
mere curiosity.
His whole desire was to get back to his work and escape from American
notoriety, and, disregarding all representations that longer residence in
the north might confirm his health, he intended to seize the first
opportunity of returning to Moulmein. But a wife was almost a necessity
both to himself and his mission, and even now, at his mature age and
broken health, he was able to win a woman of qualities almost if not
quite equal to those of the Ann and Sarah who had gone before her.
Emily Chubbuck, born in 1817, was the daughter of parents of the Baptist
persuasion, living in the State of New York. She was the fifth child of
a large family in such poor circumstances that, when she was only eleven
years old, she was sent to work at a woollen factory, where her
recollections were only of "noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching
feet, and a very sad heart;" but happily for her, the frost stopped the
works during the winter months, and she was able to go to school; and,
after two years, the family removed to a country farm. They were all
very delicate, and her elder sisters were one after the other slowly
dying of decline. This, with their "conversions" and baptisms, deepened
Emily's longing to give the tokens required by her sect for Christian
membership, but they came slowly and tardily with her, and she quaintly
told how one day she was addressed by one of the congregation whose
prayers had been asked for her, "What! this little girl not converted
yet? How do you suppose we can waste any more time in praying for you?"
Her intelligence was very great, and in 1832, when her mother wanted her
to become a milliner, she entreated to be allowed to engage herself as a
school teacher. "I stood as tall as I could," she says, when she went to
offer herself, and she was accepted, although only fifteen. The system
was that of "boarding round"--_i.e._ the young mistress had to live a
week alternately at each house, and went from thence to her school, but
she found this so uncomfortable that she ended by sleeping at home every
night. She struggled on, teaching in various schools, doing needlework
in after-hours, trying to improve herself, and always contending with
great delicacy of health, which must have made it most trying to cope
with what she calls in one of her letters "a little regiment of wild
cats" for about seven years, when some of the friends she had made
obtained of two sisters who kept a boarding school at Utica that she
should be admitted there to pursue the higher branches of study for a
year or two, and then to repay them by her services as a teacher.
The two ladies, Miss Urania and Miss Cynthia Sheldon, and their widowed
sister, Mrs. Anable, proved Emily's kindest friends, and made a
thoroughly happy home for her. She was very frail and nervous, but of
great power of influence, and even while still only a pupil had this
gift. Here she spent the rest of her maiden days, and here she supplied
the failure of her labours in needlework by contributions to magazines,
generally under the _nom de plume_ of Fanny Forester. They were chiefly
poems and short tales, and were popular enough to bring in a sum that was
very important to the Chubbuck family. The day's employment was very
full, and she stole the time required from her rest. Late one night,
Miss Sheldon seeing a light in the room looked in, and found her
trembling in nervous agitation, holding her head with her hands and her
manuscript before her; and when gently rebuked, and entreated to lie down
at once, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, "Oh! Miss Urania, I must
write; I must help my poor parents."
Her brave and dutiful endeavours prospered so much that she was actually
able to buy a house for them. It was during her stay at Utica that she
was baptized, and several of her writings were expressly for the Baptist
Sunday School Union; and though others were of a more secular cast, all
were such as could only be composed by a religious woman. A little book
of hers fell into the hands of Dr. Judson, and struck him so much that he
said, "I should be glad to know her. A lady who writes so well ought to
write better." She was then at Philadelphia, and at the moment of his
introduction to her was undergoing the process of vaccination. As soon
as it was over he entered into conversation with her with some
abruptness, demanding of her how she could employ her talents in writings
so trifling and so little spiritual as those he had read.
Emily met the rebuke without offence, but defended herself by describing
the necessity of her case, with her indigent parents depending upon her;
so that her work must almost of necessity be popular and profitable,
though, as a duty, she avoided all that could be of doubtful tendency.
The missionary was thoroughly softened, and not only acquitted her, but
begged her to undertake the biography of his wife Sarah: and this threw
them much together. He was fifty-seven, she twenty-eight, when he
offered himself to her in the following letter, sent with a watch:--
"I hand you, dearest, a charmed watch. It always comes back to me, and
brings its wearer with it. I gave it to Ann when a hemisphere divided
us, and it brought her safely and surely to my arms. I gave it to Sarah
during her husband's lifetime (not then aware of the secret), and the
charm, though slow in its operation, was true at last."
The charm worked. Emily Chubbuck was ready to follow Dr. Judson to the
deadly climate of Burmah, to share his labours, and become a mother to
the babies he had left there.
They were married on the 2nd of June, 1846, and five weeks later sailed
for Burmah, leaving the three children at school.
Emily seems to have differed from Ann and Sarah, in that she had less
actual missionary zeal than they. Sarah at least was a missionary in
heart, and, as such, became a wife; but Emily was more the wife, working
as her husband worked. She had much more literary power than either; her
letters to her friends were full of vivid description, playful accounts
of their adventures, and lively colouring even of misfortunes, pain, and
sickness. She arrived at Moulmein in November. One little boy had died
during Dr. Judson's absence, but the other two were tenderly cared for by
the new Mrs. Judson, who threw herself into all the work and interests of
the mission with great animation. It proved, however, that both the
Burman and Karen missions were well supplied with teachers; and Dr.
Judson thought he should be more useful at Rangoon, where there had,
since one attempt on the part of the Wades, been no resident missionary.
He heard accounts of the Court which made him hope to recover a footing
at Ava, and decided on again living at Rangoon; but he soon heard that
there was less hope than ever at Ava. The king whom he had known was
dead, and had been succeeded by a devoted Buddhist, whose brother and
heir, "having been prevented from being a lama," writes Dr. Judson, "poor
man! does all that he can. He descends from his prince-regal seat,
pounds and winnows the rice with his own hands, washes and boils it in
his own cook-house, and then, on bended knees, presents it to the
priests. This strong pulsation at the heart has thrown fresh blood
through the once shrivelled system of the national superstition, and now
every one vies with his neighbour in building pagodas and making
offerings to the priests. What can one poor missionary effect,
accompanied by his yet speechless wife, and followed by three men and one
woman from Moulmein, and summoning to his aid the aged pastor of Rangoon
and eight or ten surviving members of the church?"
The Vice-governor, or Raywoon, was a violent and cruel savage, whose
house and court-yard rang with shrieks from the tortured, and the old
remnant of Christians were sadly scattered. When they were collected to
worship on Sunday, they durst not either come in or go out in company,
and used to arrive with their garments tucked up to look like Coolies, or
carrying fruit or parcels, while the Karens crept down from the hills in
small parties. The Governor was friendly, but a weak man, whose
authority the Raywoon openly set at defiance; and all sorts of petty
annoyances were set in action against the teachers, while the probability
that the converts would suffer actual persecution daily increased. Dr.
Judson used to call the present difficulties the Splugen Pass, and
illness, of course, added to their troubles.
The great Buddhist fast of the year had never before been imposed on
strangers, but now the markets contained nothing but boiled rice, fruit,
or decaying fish, and terrible illness was the consequence both with
themselves and the children, until some boxes of biscuit arrived from
Moulmein, and a Mahometan was bribed to supply fowls.
But the finances of the Society at home were at a low ebb, and it was
thought needful to diminish the number of stations. The intolerance of
the Burmese Government led to the decision that there was less benefit in
maintaining that at Rangoon than those in the British provinces; and, as
Dr. Judson had no private means, he was obliged to obey and return to
Moulmein. Here he had a curious correspondence with the Prince of Siam,
whose letter began in his own English: "Venerable sir, having received
very often your far-famed qualities, honesty, faithfulness,
righteousness, gracefulness, and very kindness to poor nation, &c., from
reading the book of your ancient wife's memoir and journal." . . . The
object of this letter was to ask for some of his Burmese translations,
and, in return for them, his Royal Highness sent "a few artificial
flowers, two passion flowers, one mognayet or surnamed flower, and three
roses manufactured by most celebrated princess the daughter of the late
second king or sub-king."
The Dictionary continued to be Judson's chief occupation, for his
affection of the voice rendered him unable to take charge of a
congregation. He continued to work at it till the November of 1849, when
he caught a severe cold, which brought on an attack of fever, and from
that time he never entirely rallied.
One of the last pleasures of his life deserves to be mentioned. He had
always had a strong feeling for the Jews, and had longed to work for
their conversion, praying that he might at least do something towards it.
After his last illness had begun, a letter was read to him by his wife,
giving an account of a German Jew who had been led, by reading the
history of his toils in Burmah in the Gospel cause, to study Christianity
and believe. "Love," he said presently, his eyes full of tears, "this
frightens me. I do not know what to make of it." "What?" "What you
have just been reading. I never was deeply interested in any object; I
never prayed sincerely and fervently for anything, but it came at some
time--no matter how distant a day--somehow, in some shape, probably the
last I should have devised, it came. And yet I have always had so little
faith."
After spending a month at Amherst in the vain hope of improvement, a sea-
voyage was recommended; but his reluctance was great, for his wife was
expecting a second child, and could not go with him. There are some
lines of hers describing her night-watches, so exquisite and descriptive,
that we must transcribe them:--
"Sleep, love, sleep!
The dusty day is done.
Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep
Wide over groves of balm,
Down from the towering palm,
In at the open casement cooling run;
And round thy lowly bed,
Thy bed of pain,
Bathing thy patient head,
Like grateful showers of rain
They come;
While the white curtains, waving to and fro,
Fan the sick air;
And pityingly the shadows come and go,
With gentle human care,
Compassionate and dumb.
The dusty day is done,
The night begun;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
Is there no magic in the touch
Of fingers thou dost love so much?
Fain would they scatter poppies o'er thee now;
Or, with its mute caress,
The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press
Upon thy weary lid and aching brow;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
On the pagoda spire
The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,
Till all are ringing,
As if a choir
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing;
And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear;
Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy's distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near.
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
So silent that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.
The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day's hard din;
Then boldly ventures out,
And looks around,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin.
And still the curtains swing,
But noiselessly;
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
As tears were in the sky:
More heavily the shadows fall,
Like the black foldings of a pall,
Where juts the rough beam from the wall;
The candles flare
With fresher gusts of air;
The beetle's drone
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan;
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone."
In spite of all this tender care, Dr. Judson became so much worse that,
as a last resource, a passage was taken for him and another missionary,
named Ramney, on board a French vessel bound for the Isle of Bourbon. The
outset of the voyage was very rough, and this produced such an increase
of illness, that his life closed on the 12th of April, 1850, only a
fortnight after parting from his wife, though it was not for four months
that she could be informed of his loss. During this time she had given
birth to a dead babe, and had suffered fearfully from sorrow and
suspense.
She had become valuable enough to the mission for there to be much
anxiety to retain her, and at first she thought of remaining; but her
health was too much broken, and in a few months she carried home her
little girl and her two step-sons. She collected the family together,
and spent her time in the care of them, and in contributing materials for
the Life of her husband; but the hereditary disease of her family had
already laid its grasp on her, and she died on the 1st of June, 1854, the
last of a truly devoted group of workers, as remarkable for their
cheerfulness as for their heroism.