The story of Carey's life and work in India cannot be followed in detail. We have come to the close of that portion of his history which properly belongs to these brief sketches of illustrious shoemakers. A few sentences must suffice to give a picture of his labors as a missionary and the result of those labors. For six or seven years Carey and his friends had to endure much hardship, and their proceedings were hampered by difficulties of various kinds. To begin with, they had no legal standing in the country, and were forced at length to take up their quarters under the Danish flag at Serampore. "Here they bought a house, and organized themselves into a family society, resolving that whatever was done by any member should be for the benefit of the mission. They opened a school, in which the children of those natives who chose to send them were instructed gratuitously."[44] The funds supplied from home were but scanty, and they were compelled to resort to trade for their livelihood and the means of carrying on their work. "Thomas, who was a surgeon, intended to support himself by his profession. Carey's plan was to take land and cultivate it for his maintenance."[45] At one time, when funds were exhausted, Mr. Carey "was indebted for an asylum to an opulent native;" at another time, driven to distraction by want of money, by the apparent failure of his plans, and the upbraidings of his unsympathetic partner, he removed with his family to the Soonderbunds, and took a small grant of land, which he proposed to cultivate for his own maintenance; and, later on, he thankfully accepted, as a way out of his difficulties and a means of furthering his missionary projects, the post of superintendent of an indigo factory at Mudnabatty. This post he held for five or six years. No sooner had he got into this position of comparative independence than he wrote home and proposed that "the sum which might be considered his salary should be devoted to the printing of the Bengali translation of the New Testament." This generous proposal is a fair illustration of his self-sacrificing spirit from the beginning to the end of his missionary life. To the work of translating and circulating the Scriptures in the languages of India he devoted not only all his time and his vast mental powers, but whatever private funds might be at his command. As the work proceeded, and he became known and employed by the government in various professorships, these funds were often very considerable. In 1807, when Carey held the Professorship of Oriental Languages at the Fort William College, at a salary of £1200 a year, Mr. Ward, one of his colleagues, wrote, in reply to some unfriendly remarks made in an English publication, that Dr. Carey and Mr. Marshman "were contributing £2400 a year," and receiving from the mission fund "only their food and a trifle of pocket-money for apparel." [44] _Quarterly Review_, Feb. 1809, p. 197. [45] Ibid.