The shade trees along the streets swarm with monkeys and parrots, which are sacred, and when you go there you mustn't jump if a grinning monkey drops down upon your shoulders in a most casual manner and chatters in your ear. The animals are very tame. They are fed by the pilgrims, who gain great merit with the gods thereby, and the river is filled with sacred turtles, which are also objects of great interest and devotion. Only two towns in India are more sacred than Muttra. One is Benares and the other is Jagernath, or Juggernaut, which is about 150 miles south of Calcutta on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. There is the great idol which we have all heard about from the missionaries, and, I regret to say, some have been guilty of a good deal of misrepresentation and exaggeration. When I was a boy I read in Sunday-school books the most heart-tearing tales about the poor heathen, who cast themselves down before the car of Juggernaut and were crushed to lifeless pulp under its monstrous wheels. This story has been told thousands of times to millions of horrified listeners, but an inquiry into the facts does not confirm it. It is true that on certain holy days the great image of Juggernaut, or Jagernath, whichever way you choose to spell it, and it weighs many tons, is placed upon a car and the car is drawn through the crowded streets by thousands of pilgrims, who cast flowers, rice, wheat, palm leaves, bamboo wisps, sweetmeats and other offerings in its way. Occasionally in the throng that presses around the image some one is thrown down and has the life trampled out of him; on several occasions people have been caught by the wheels or the frame of the car and crushed, and at rare intervals some hysterical worshiper has fallen in a fit of epilepsy or exhaustion and been run over, but the official records, which began in 1818, show only nine such occurrences during the last eighty-six years. I have great respect for missionaries, but I wish some of them would be more charitable in disposition, a little more accurate in statement, and not print so much trash. In Muttra you have a good illustration of their usefulness. The American Methodists commenced work there in 1887. No educational or evangelical work had ever been attempted previous to that time, but the men and women who came were wise, tactful and industrious, and the result may be seen in a dozen or more schools, with several thousand pupils, a flourishing, self-supporting church, a medical mission, a deaconesses' home and training school, a printing establishment and bookshop which is self-supporting and a large number of earnest, intelligent converts. Wherever you go in heathen lands you will find that wisdom, judgment, tact and ability, when applied in any direction, always show good results, but all missionaries, I regret to say, are not endowed with those qualities or with what Rev. Dr. Hepburn of Japan calls "sanctified common sense," and the consequences are sometimes deplorable.