India: Notes from My Diary

We sailed from Suez Oct. 26th, 1879, for Bombay, and arrived at our destination Nov. 12th. I remained at Bombay until Jan. 1st, 1800, visiting, in the meantime, various places where M. E. Churches have been established, and holding meetings as opportunity offered.

Miss Drake remained in Bombay, and I had for a traveling companion for some time afterwards, Miss Jennie Frow, a missionary stationed at Chaculdah, who had been on a visit to Bombay, and now was returning to her work.

January 1st, 1880. The Lord's Word to me this morning is, "Lo, I am with you always." I leave for Cawnpore. Watch night at Dr. Thoburn's church at Calcutta. I dine with Brother Goodwin, and the Stones, of Ohio.

Monday 5th. Cawnpore. Praise the Lord for this quiet day of rest. A nice drive to Memorial Gardens. What a sad fate that of those who sleep there! How dreadful the story of the Cawnpore well, where so many were massacred and thrown in at the time of the great Indian mutiny.

Wednesday, 7th. Conference opens to-day. A solemn but blessed time. The meeting of so many friends. How much it seemed like home to me. Praise the Lord! My head is very tired, but my soul is fresh.

Thursday, 22nd. Allahabad. Spend the day with Brother Dennis Osborn.

Saturday, 24th. My last Saturday in Alahabad. We go to the Maila. It is like what we would call in this country a fair. Oh, the hundreds of people. Oh, to see the heathen idol worship!

MARKET PLACE, BOMBAY, INDIA.

How sad to see the different idols they worship displayed on their flags and in every possible shape and way. My heart ached, and I prayed to the Lord to send help and light to these poor heathen.

Friday, Feb. 13th. Dear Jennie Frow is not so well to-day. God bless her! It is now Jennie Fuller. She was married since then. We leave to-day for Nagpore. Praise God for His great care over us during the night. We had to drive with the bullocks this fifty-one miles back to Acola. They had been mending the road, and there was a great deep gutter about a quarter of a mile in length. We had to change our bullocks three times; and the third time we thought we had got a very stupid driver; we got to a place where the bullocks would not go on, and the man seemed to be stupid. Poor Miss Frow remonstrated, and told him to go on; but the bullocks would not go; so we thought we would get out, and see what was the matter. It was very dark, and there were no lights; and when we got out and walked ahead two or three yards we saw the great danger we were in; if the bullocks had gone on, they would have surely broken their necks, and we might have been killed. Oh, how we praised the Lord when we saw the danger that God had saved us from. Then we had to turn the bullocks down on the lower road.

There are generally two roads; a native road, and an English road; the English roads were better, as a rule; they generally kept in their provinces good roads; we were on the English road, so we had to turn out and go down on the native road, which was very rough, because they never mended them, or made any repairs on them.

Sunday, 22nd. A meeting at Camp Te to-night. The Lord helped me this once. He led me to give my experience, and I had great liberty, and he made it a blessing. We leave for Elegepore. I feel I ought to stay. There was such an interest manifested in the grand aftermeeting.

Col. Whitlock was a very earnest Christian gentleman; he had a very beautiful little daughter, and one night when we were holding meeting in a large hall (he always took an interest in any religious meeting, which was not very customary among English soldiers), his little daughter, about ten years old, became very much interested, and when I asked them to rise for prayers, among others in the great congregation, this little girl rose; and the Lord blessed her; she seemed very happy and bright. Her father was

delighted with her decision; the mother, too; but still she was afraid she did not understand what she was doing. But the little thing persisted, and had the sympathy and help of her father. So she would have her mother come to me next day, and I had a very nice Christian talk with her, and told her how she might help the little child, and she seemed very much pleased.

The child acted out her position by beginning to do something. Her mother kept a Hindoo derzy; a man who does all the sewing and mending and everything of the kind, in a family. Some of them have two or three. You will find them in almost every family in India. All the clothes to be made or mended are given to these men, and they sit down in a corner that is arranged for them, and do the sewing. They come and go, morning and evening, and are very quiet. They never pass about through the house only at their work. This one had been living with them a long time, and was a pucka Hindoo; that is, what we would call strong, or rank, or staunch in their faith.

So little Ethel began to tell him about what Jesus could do; and as she could talk the native language as well as a native, he listened to her; and she kept it up till he got so interested he asked her for a Testament; and so she got a Testament, and made the old man promise that he would read it. He was greatly pleased with it.

Who knows but what that child, though but ten years old, who was the means of getting that Hindoo to read the Testament, was sent by God with light to this poor, dark mind.

"It may not be my way,
It may not be thy way;
But yet, in His own way,
The Lord will provide."

When we went to leave, Mrs. Whitlock gave me a very handsome India shawl, and prepared us a beautiful lunch, and in so many ways was kind. In the lunch, she put two loaves of bread, a half dozen boiled eggs, six bottles of lemonade, a bottle of champagne, a bottle of wine, and I don't know what all else; but she sent a man with a note on Sunday afternoon, and this beautiful basket of lunch.

My! what a time I had over it. I couldn't send it back. The shawl was an elegant thing. It was about a twenty-five dollar

shawl. The only objection I had to it, was, it was scarlet. But, still, that was not much, for I could get it dyed. But, I thought to myself, "What will I do with this wine and brandy?" I knew Miss Frow would not touch it, and I was a staunch teetotaler. "If I take it and say nothing about it, she may think, and tell somebody, that I was a good woman, and yet I accepted it," and I didn't know what to do.

So I prayed about it very earnestly. The enemy wanted to make me believe that she would he greatly offended, and that now I would undo all the good work that I might have done. Oh, how terribly tempted I was over that!

Sunday night was my last night. I spoke at the hall.

And that was the night I had promised to speak more especially of temperance. But then I had received a bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne. So the Devil suggested to me that nobody would know it, and now if Col. and Mrs. Whitlock were there, it would be better for me not to say anything about it, after they had been so very kind, and that they did not see it like I did. So I reasoned.

At last I resolved by the grace of God I would tell Mrs. Whitlock that I could not have it, and would go on and speak on temperance in the meeting, as I had intended. So, when the time came, I went to church.

Just as I got to the door going in, I met Col. and Mrs. Whitlock, and little Ethel; so I very kindly thanked the lady for the elegant shawl, and for the lunch which she had sent me; but then, I said, "Now what will I do with the bottle of champagne and the wine? for I am a staunch teetotaler; I never touch it."

"Miss Frow looks so pale," she said, "I thought a little wine would do her good."

"But, Oh," I said, "she would not touch it for the world. She is also a staunch teetotaler."

Then she laughed, and said, "You do with it, Mrs. Smith, anything you like."

I thanked her very kindly, and told her I would.

The Lord gave me liberty in speaking that night, and I was very strong on the subject of temperance. No one was offended. Everybody seemed to be much interested and pleased.

We went from there up to Chaculdah. That was Miss Frow's station. Mr. and Mrs. Sibley were there in charge of this station, and she was their assistant.

What a pleasant time we had at Chaculdah. There was a poor, old, native Christian woman who was very ill. She had been a very faithful servant in a Eurasian family for years; but because of great persecution from her own people on account of caste, though she believed in Christianity, she never came out. But when she got feeble, and sick, and very bad off, she went over to Mrs. Sibley's instead of going to her own people; she wanted to be a Christian; and they put her in a little house where she was very comfortable.

She was very fond of Miss Frow. So the first thing we did after we got home and rested a little, we went in to see this old woman. Oh, how emaciated she was! so worn; and she was dying; but she seemed to be happy. Miss Frow talked and prayed with her.

When we went out I said to Miss Frow:

"How would it do to give this woman (she is dying anyhow) a little of that wine?"

"Oh," she said, "I wouldn't dare to do it. She used to like it very much. They used to have it, of course, in the families where she had been so long, and she had got to like it, and it might be the means of diverting her mind. I had rather she would die without it."

So there I had it to contend with.

In a few days the old woman passed away. That was the first native Christian funeral I had seen. They dressed her nicely, and then the natives came and embalmed her, and then we carried her to the grave.

I shall never forget how pretty and nice it looked in the grave. She was the first native Christian that had been buried in that part of the country at that time, so it made quite a sensation. The grave was dug down a certain depth, and then dug out in the side so as to form a kind of niche, or shelf, and she was laid in this niche, then the earth was thrown in; so that the earth was not thrown on her, like we do here, and I thought how nice it was; I wouldn't mind being buried there myself. I think it is a much better way than putting the earth right on top of the coffin.

There we left her, to rest till the morning of the resurrection, when the trump shall sound, and when the dead in Christ shall rise. The grave die not seem to have gloom and sadness, even in India, with Christ.

PREPARING A MEAL, BOMBAY, INDIA.

From Chaculdah I went to Lenoula. I kept this wine and champagne in my lunch basket, well covered up. I was so afraid somebody would see it, and if the natives saw it, I would not be able to explain. I thought I would take it to Bombay and give it to old Sister Miles, who was a grand, good woman, in the hospital at Bombay and, like Dorcas, "full of good works all the time."

"Well," I said to myself, "Mrs. Whitlock said I could do with it what I pleased, and I will give it to Sister Miles. She is so judicious and careful, she will know whom to give it to—the very weak and faint ones who are about to die; I don't think it would be any harm to give it to them."

Brother Fox was Presiding Elder, and it was Quarterly Meeting at Lenoula. So after resting all day, they had meeting Friday night. At first I thought I would not go out, as it was quite a little walk from the house to the church. Then the moon was so beautiful and the evening was so pleasant, that I decided to go.

The Lord's hand was in it. He had a great lesson to teach me. Brother Fox preached. A number of natives were taken in. Then we had an after meeting. It was full of interest and spirit.

Just as Brother Fox went to close the meeting, a man rose in the rear of the church, a fine looking Englishman; how well I remember him; I can see him now. He was a man that weighed about a hundred and fifty, and was about five feet and something in height; he was dressed in pure white, and had a full, round, flush, English face, with black hair and black eyes. I had noticed he had sat very seriously looking and listening all through the service. But now he was on his feet, and he called out:

"Brethren, I want to speak a word."

"Go on, certainly," Brother Fox said.

And he said, in a most deploring, pleading way, "Oh, brethren, brethren, whatever you do, be careful about strong drink. Don't ever advise any one to take it, under any circumstances," etc.

My! I trembled. I thought, "There, now, everybody knows I have those bottles."

They were in the lunch basket, well covered up, away back under the bed in my room. But it seemed to me somebody had found it out.

Well, I heard the story of this man. He said: "I have been a man that has been addicted to strong drink, and I have been overcome. It has been my ruin. But I came here and was converted,

and for two years I went on, and the Lord blessed me. But I was not here at the last Quarterly Meeting; and why? Because I had been overcome. I was sick with diarrhoea, very bad, and a good brother came in to see me, and he told me if I were to take blackberry brandy it would cure me. I took it. The diarrhoea stopped, but it brought back the old appetite, and for six weeks I was in the gutter. For God's sake, don't advise anybody to take it. Better let them die."

And then he sat down.

"Lord," I said, "help."

There was a sad feeling that went over the house. Then Brother Fox got up and emphasized what he had said, and told an experience similar that he knew of, and then another, and another.

One man stated another case: He said that he knew a man who was very ill. They took him to the hospital. He was about dead, as they thought, so he prayed and gave himself to the Lord, and was very peaceful and happy. It pleased the Lord after awhile to restore him so that he became quite convalescent, and one day a friend went to see him and he looked so weak and pale that he thought that just a little wine might refresh and strengthen him, so he got some wine and took it to him. It brought on the old appetite so strong that that night this man slipped away from the hospital and went into the town and got some cheap whisky and got so terribly drunk that next morning when they found him he was in the gutter dying.

"Lord, deliver me," I thought, "can it be that they know I was going to take this wine to Sister Miles? By the grace of God I will never do it. Though she is judicious and careful, it might not be the thing."

On Monday morning, about five o'clock, I left Lenoula for Bombay. I never told anybody about what I had. They all supposed it was nothing but lunch in my basket, as everybody carried a lunch basket. And after the train left the station and we got pretty well under way, and there was nobody in the compartment but myself (the Lord helped me to be alone, for I said, "Now, Lord, help me to get rid of this champagne and wine"), I took the bottle of champagne, and just as we were crossing a very deep cut, about fifty or a hundred feet deep, I threw out the bottle and heard it rumble and gurgle as it went down.

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," I said, then out went the other bottle.

No one saw me, and I expect they are there yet, for the cut was so deep that no mortal would ever go down after them, I think. And that is the way I got deliverance from my champagne and wine.

The day we left for Chaculdah we prayed around—Miss Wheeler, Miss Frow, and I, last. I had been so deeply touched at seeing the sacrifice and need of these poor girls. They were there all alone. Fifty-one miles was the nearest railway station. And but two or three English families within two miles of them, except some English officers' headquarters.

Two of these officers had their wives there some of the time, but they are often, both husbands and wives, far from being Christians, and have but little sympathy with missionaries and their work. So these two girls, being there alone, were looked upon with a kind of suspicion. No woman had ever been known to build a house before. But Miss Wheeler had been her own architect and superintended her work, bought her lime, and tiles, and thatch, and everything.

I have known her while I was there to be out counting tiles from six o'clock in the evening till nine and sometimes ten o'clock at night.

The native men whom they had to deal with, felt like some of the English officers who were there. They thought that a woman had not sense enough to build a house, and if she had she ought not to do it, for it was lowering her dignity as a woman.

So the men gave them a great deal of trouble. They would come and make fine promises, then you must pay them so much money before they brought the things you needed or ordered. Then they would go away, and you might see them again in two or three days, or a week, or maybe not all. All this time you could do nothing, but you must wait.

A thing of that kind might happen two or three times during a month. So the work was delayed, and they had much to contend with.

It was three miles to the nearest village, of more than two thousand inhabitants, where Miss Wheeler used to go almost every day and do her missionary work in the zenanas, or preach to a crowd in some open space in the village, or under a tree. Then they had a room where she dispensed medicines two or three times a week, as the case might be.

Miss Lucy Drake, now Mrs. William B. Osborn, of Hacketstown, with Miss Wheeler, was the first to start the work at Bassim, under the auspices of Dr. Cullis, of Boston, but after a year or so Miss Drake's health failed and she returned to America, but Miss Wheeler remained. She has never been home since she left. She is a marvel. Her powers of endurance and stick-to-it-iveness and deep heart loyalty to God have made her rightly called one of God's noble women.

If they needed a loaf of bread, or a pound of sugar or flour, or the most trivial article, if they didn't happen to have it in the house, they had to go, or send, fifty-one miles for it, which generally took about three days, with a slow-going ox cart, as we would say, but bullock wagon, as they say in India.

Those were the pioneer days. God has wrought wonders since then. Praise His name. How I did pity and sympathize with these poor girls.

So while I was praying the morning before I left the Spirit of the Lord came upon me in a wonderful manner, and I was led to pray, "Oh, Lord, put it into somebody's heart to build a railroad through this part of the country, so it will not be so hard for those who are isolated to get the things they so often need."

I shall never forget how I felt as I prayed. And these words came to me: "Therefore I say unto you, all things whatsoever you ask in faith believing, ye shall receive." And I saw a railroad as really as I ever saw a railroad, by faith.

When I rose they laughed at me, and said, "You think we will have a railroad?"

"Yes," I said, "God will do it. You will see."

And it did come to pass in less than two years after, that the East Indian Railroad Company put a railroad right through that section of country and, I was told, a station within two miles of Bassim Faith Mission House. That was the name inscribed on the front of the building.

While I was in Africa a Mrs. Wills, from Bassa, Liberia, was in London on a visit. She went to a meeting at Miss Mason's House of Rest, and there she met a lady who told her to tell me when she got back to Africa that the prayer I had prayed in India for a railroad to Bassim had been answered, and the railroad was finished.

That was the first I knew of it from the time I prayed, and I said, "Praise the Lord. Is there anything too hard for God?"

Naini Tal, India, Wednesday, September 15, 1880. The morning is beautiful. Miss Fannie Sparks and I take our men and go up to what is called the snow seat. It is about two miles, I suppose, right up hill. The men who carry you in the dandies, when they get to a certain point on the hill, turn you round, and carry you up backwards. I don't know why they do this, but I think they have an idea that you are not so heavy carried that way. Miss Sparks had four men and I had four. When we got up to the top of the hill we found it very broad, a kind of tableland. You can look for miles away, and the hills are covered with snow.

When they put us down, and we stepped out of our chairs and turned round, we looked right on the great mountain ridge of snow, beautifully white, and the sun shining on it like silver. Oh! I thought I never saw anything so beautiful. I wanted to shout right out, and wave my hat.

But then one has to be so careful, because the natives watch you, and they think that it means you are worshiping the snow or the great mountains. So I had to restrain myself from shouting and dancing.

Oh! the sight was glorious to behold! Miss Sparks and I walked about, and then we sat down and had a nice little Bible reading together, and then we knelt down and had such a blessed prayer meeting. I shall never forget that morning.

That night, Wednesday night, was our prayer meeting. We were not very spiritual, still we had a good meeting.

Thursday, September 16th. The day the great flood began. It rained all day Thursday. Sometimes it would lighten up, and seem as though it was going to clear off; then a heavy cloud and fog would set in, and the rain would pour. All day Thursday, all night Thursday night, all day Friday, and all night Friday night.

By that time we began to get serious; we wondered; for the water ran in torrents; great trenches would give way in the ground; banks were falling in; and we did not know but danger was coming to us.

Miss Sparks, and dear Miss Leighton, who has recently gone to her rest, were staying at the Mission House, with Mr. and Mrs. Mudge, and we were expecting to return to the plains the following week. Mr. G. N. Cheney was pastor of the Methodist Church. Rev. Mr. Buck was pastor of the native work. I stayed

with Mr. and Mrs. Buck, at their home. I shall never forget their kindness to me.

Friday night we didn't sleep much. Mr. Buck was up most of the night, working; he and the boys. I had four boys and Miss Swain had four. We generally had to keep these boys by the month, so as to have them when we wanted to go anywhere; for we could not walk up the hills, they were so steep and long. We didn't pay them much wages; we didn't have anything to do with finding their food, or anything of that kind. We gave them a suit, which was their outfit.

In this, the Lord was good to me, for dear Mrs. Fleming gave my boys their suits, and made them; and they didn't cost me anything, I remember so well what they were, and how nice they looked; they were of a kind of brown flannel; the pants just reached to their knees; the coats were bound with red round the bottom and sleeves; and a little skull cap bound with red; they were very picturesque. There are always outhouses where the servants stay. These boys used to get wood and sell it days when they did not have anything else to do; so they kept along very nicely; I used to buy the wood from them sometimes.

Well, Mr. Buck and the boys worked all night almost. When Mr. Buck came in in the morning, he was very much exhausted. How pale he looked. We could not get any breakfast; nobody seemed to want anything to eat.

He said we would have to pile up all the things in the house. So we began. The people up at the Mission House had piled their trunks outside. The water began to come in on them.

Between three and four o'clock in the morning Miss Sparks and Miss Leighton came down to our house. We had got our things out of one part of the house, and piled them in the parlor; then we took them from there and piled them on the veranda outside.

When morning came we were all in the parlor having a little rest. Some one said we ought to have a prayer meeting; so we got down and prayed as best we could; then we rose, and were quietly thinking what was the next thing to be done.

I went to my room, for I felt I could pray a little better alone. After awhile Miss Sparks came in, and she knelt down by the bed beside me, and we prayed. I shall never forget Miss Sparks' prayer.

HILL MEN, NAINI TAL, INDIA.

When we arose she said, "The Lord has given me the assurance that this house will not go down." I said, "Amen."

After we went out, the engineer, who had been examining the hillside, came by and said to Mr. Buck, "I think this end of your house will go; but the other end is on the rock, and I think it is safer."

About nine o'clock the baker came. We got several loaves of bread, for that was about all we could get to eat. I bought two loaves for my men; they had not had anything to eat, and they were shivering with the cold, and were wet and hungry; but their caste feeling was so deep, that, hungry as they were, they would not touch the bread. One of them seemed for a moment to have forgotten; and just as I picked up a loaf and handed it to him, the other shouted to him, "Don't you do it!" and he threw it down as though he had had a snake.

Poor fellows, how I pitied them! One day one of my boys was suffering with a pain in his stomach, and came to me for some medicine, he said. I had some Jamaica ginger, and I mixed some with some water and sugar, and brought it to him; I never thought but he would drink it right down; but, no, he said, he could not.

"Well," I said, "what are you going to do?" And he went to a tree and got a leaf, and shaped it, and I had to pour the liquid in the leaf, then he drank it out of the leaf. If he had drunk it out of the glass he would have broken his caste.

Oh, how they are anchored to that caste feeling! But God is delivering them. The door is open. Light is coming. Praise the Lord.

The hotel was a very short distance from the mission house: perhaps a half block. There was a lady, whose name I have forgotten, who had come up from the plains a few days before, and was staying at the hotel (her father's), with her two children, and her native nurse. The youngest child was about a year old; the other about two years old. The nurse was giving the baby his bath in their room, and the mother had taken the other little boy, and gone out in the breakfast room to breakfast. She had not more than got out of the room when the side of the hill came down and buried the nurse and baby.

Mr. Buck and I were standing on the veranda. Mr. Buck said, "Well, Sister Smith, this is terrible."

"What will we do?" I said.

It would be as dark almost at times as six o'clock in the evening. Then it would lighten up, and you would hope that the sun was coming out; but, no.

After awhile Mr. Buck looked up the hill toward Government House. Government House was a large house where the Governor lived. It stood on a beautiful hill; and, though it was quite a ways up to Government House, it was beautiful to look from; the sight, when you got up, was charming, every way you would look.

So, standing on the veranda, we could look eastward and see Government House quite distinctly, though it was about two and a half or three miles away. And, as Mr. Buck stood looking, he said to me, "Why, Sister Smith. just look at those trees."

And just as I turned to look, the trees were swaying first one way, then another, and all at once there was it crash, and they went down so gracefully, and the earth plowed like a great avalanche.

Well, there was a panic. Everybody left the house, and got out as quickly as he could; the news spread rapidly, and in a little while there were a hundred and fifty or two hundred men, many of them English soldiers, digging, trying to get out this child and nurse; and while they were digging away as hard as they could, and we were lamenting, and feeling the sadness that had come upon this family, the earth gave way again, and buried them.

They didn't see the danger, and we couldn't alarm them; their heads were down as they were digging; and it struck the other part of the hotel and swept on, then it passed on like a great moving mountain; I never saw such a sight; it moved on, carrying great boulders on its face!

The next was the large reading-room and postoffice that stood on the lake, the Hindoo Temple, and Bell's large store.

I had just seen from the veranda some ladies and gentlemen go into the reading-room, and they had not come out; and there were persons in Bell's store whom I knew; one, a lady who was a very earnest Christian. I said to Mr. Buck, "Oh, Bell's store," and I had hardly got the words out of my month when it was swept away! Then "The Reading Room," and I had no more than said it till it was taken! "And there goes the Temple next" and there it was in the lake!

The lake was about a half-mile wide, and, perhaps, three miles in length; but the whole thing swept into the lake, and the noise was like the blast of a cannon, and the smoke ascended upwards; it swept everything clear; and there was not a brick of the chimney, or a piece of wood left. The horror of that hour I never want to see again!

Then the men came and said we would all have to leave the house; so we started. We thought we would go to the Methodist Church; but the native Christian Church had been swept away, and so they had taken refuge in the church.

The first native Christian had died on Friday night. She had been sick for quite a while, and Mrs. Buck and all went and did everything they could for her.

She was in one of the outhouses on the hill. So Mrs. Buck and I went up and prepared her for her burial. Mrs. Buck dressed her in a nice, white gown, combed her hair, washed her, and got her all ready to bury, and we left her lying on her bed and went down to the house; and about an hour and a half after it seemed like the Lord buried this woman Himself; for the house gave way, the ground opened, and she went down, bed and all, and was covered up. I never heard that she ever had any other burial!

Well, when they told us we would have to leave the house, we thought we would go to Mr. Sasha's; he was it photographer. Everybody had to look out for himself; and I felt I was alone, and everybody had so many more cares, and so I had to do the best I could for myself. Miss Sparks and I were the last to leave the house.

As we started down to Sasha's I thought I would go over to Mrs. Fleming's, which was about a quarter of a mile further along from our place. Mrs. Fleming had a large dressmaking establishment. Her men, who worked for her (for the native men do all the dressmaking, pretty much, there,) are called derzies; sometimes she would have twelve men, all sitting down on the floor in a row, sewing. She did the cutting and fitting, and these derzies did all the other work; the trimming and fixing of all kinds.

Her men were all gone. They had sent the children away, and Mr. and Mrs. Fleming were the two last to leave the house, and they were going on horseback. I said to Mrs. Fleming, "I don't know what to do, or where to go."

"Well," she said, "go with us as far as Sasha's."

The sweeping away of the Hindoo Temple had made the Hindoos so vexed; they felt, mid thought, the Gods were angry with the missionaries, and so had destroyed their temple; and there was an expression of indignation on the countenance of every one.

I remember as I was going along I would put my foot on what seemed to be a piece of turf, but it would give way, and sometimes I would go down almost to my knee; sometimes when I would step on it I would stick in tight; once or twice I thought I was stuck fast; two or three of these men passed by, and with a scornful sneer they grinned as though they hoped I could not get out.

I prayed to the Lord to help me, and finally I got to Sasha's. I went in. Miss Sparks, and Miss Leighton, and some others, had gathered there. Mrs. Sasha had a very sick baby; but she had had the servant get them a cup of tea, and they were getting a little refreshed; so when I got in they gave me a cup of tea, and Mrs. Sasha got me it pair of dry stockings; and just as I got my stockings on, and drank part of my tea, Mr. Mooney, an Englishman, came and said, "You will have to get out of here as quick as you possibly can; all the houses on this hillside are falling down."

Mrs. Sasha picked up her baby, supposed to be dying, in her arms, and started; we begged her to wait a little. She said, "It is easy for you all; you have got religion, and something to comfort you; but I have not."

Then clasping her little baby she ran. Mr. Sasha got the hammock and sent the boys after her, with some other things, for she went without a bonnet.

I was the last to get out of the house. I was so weak I trembled from head to foot. I was not excited; I was just weak; and it seemed to me I could never get my things on. But when I did get them on, Mr. Mooney—God bless that man; all the rest had gone—took me by the arm, and literally dragged me. He was a very strong man. As I think it over now it seems I can feel the grasp of his hand on my right arm.

We went from there to a Mr. Frazier's, about a mile away, on the other side of the hill altogether.

As I went along I said to myself, "The idea of running away from God." I said to Mr. Mooney, "I don't mean to go another

NAINI TAL, BEFORE THE LAND SLIDE.

peg; all the people can go who want to go; but I am done running; by the grace of God I shall not run anywhere. Running away from God! Lord, help me." And He did.

We got over to Mr. Frazier's, I suppose about five o'clock in the afternoon.

Mr. Frazier was a Scotchman; a very nice man. He had a large house, and he and his sons were there in some kind of government business. So we were all very comfortable. They got us a very nice supper, and we were all enjoying it. But the sorrow and sadness among the poor soldiers' wives and their companies, and the weeping, were very touching.

After we had had supper, and were sitting talking, each one telling how he got out, what he thought, what he did, etc., Mr. Buck began to feel anxious to know what had become of the poor, native Christians, and he said it was so dark he didn't know what to do. Mr. Mooney said, "I will go and see what has become of them." Mr. Buck said he would be so glad if he would. So Mr. Mooney started off. About a half hour or more after he had gone, all at once there came over me a horror of darkness and awful sadness. I could not account for it. I left the room and went off to myself, and knelt down and prayed. Oh, how I prayed! I said, "Lord, there is no use going anywhere, but somebody is in awful danger."

It seemed to come to me as though somebody was in danger; and so I prayed the Lord to deliver somebody from danger. My heart seemed to get a little quiet then, and I got up and went out into the room again. I looked at everybody, but no one seemed to be unhappy; they were peaceful and quiet; so I sat a while, and they talked on.

Finally this agony came over me again; then I said to the brethren and friends, "Let us pray; I feel that somebody is in great danger; Oh! let us pray!" and we all knelt down and began to pray. When we got through we arose, and about a half hour afterward Mr. Mooney came back, and told what a narrow escape he had had from death; and looking at his watch, and comparing the time of the danger with the time I had had the agony, the time was identical.

A flash of lightning saved him from going down into the lake; though he knew the road so well, the trees and boulders had so piled up across the road that he missed his way, and just as he

was going to step into the lake a flash of lightning came, and instead of stepping forward he stepped back, and to one side, and so was saved.

Now, that seemed to be a strange coincidence, yet it was God. I shall never be able to tell anyone the awful agony that came over we to pray for somebody that was in danger. This man was my savior a few hours before; and, in answer to prayer, God helped me to be his savior a few hours later. Praise the Lord! He still moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.