Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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