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
As soon as he mended a little, he enjoyed talking over his Hebrew and
Greek studies and his ethnological researches with his clever and eager
hostess, who must have greatly refreshed his spirit. He delighted in
music: his voice and ear were both excellent, and he taught her many
hymns and their tunes. He also took much pleasure in a little orphan
girl whom she was bringing up. At this time she herself was almost a
childless mother, all her Indian-born infants having been victims to the
climate; but a few months later Mr. Martyn christened her little daughter
Lucy, a child of such gentle, gracious temper that he was wont to call
her Serena. Mrs. Sherwood gives a pretty picture of this little
creature, when about eighteen months old, creeping up to Mr. Martyn as he
lay on a sofa with all his books about him, and perching herself on his
Hebrew Lexicon, which he needed every moment, but would not touch so as
to disturb her. The pale, white-clad pastor, and the child with silky
hair, bare white feet and arms, and little muslin frock, looked equally
innocent and pure.
Mr. Martyn's house at Cawnpore was at the end of an avenue of palms and
aloes: there were two bungalows connected by a long passage, in one of
which he himself lived, the other was given up to Sabat and his wife. The
garden was prettily laid out with shrubs and tall trees, with a raised
platform in the centre; and on one side was a whole colony, consisting
not only of the usual number of servants allowed to a military chaplain,
but of a host of pundits, moonshees, schoolmasters, and poor nominal
Christians, who hung about him because there was no one else to give them
a handful of rice for their daily maintenance.
Here Mrs. Sherwood describes a motley entertainment, at which she was the
only lady. Her husband, in his scarlet and gold uniform, and Mr. Martyn,
in his clerical black silk coat, were the only other English. The other
European present was Padre Giulio Cesare, an Italian Franciscan, whom Mr.
Martyn was obliged to receive when he came to minister to the numerous
Irish Roman Catholics in the regiment. He wore a purple satin cassock, a
cord of twisted silk, a rosary of costly stones, and a little skull-cap,
and his languages were French with the Sherwoods, and Italian and Latin
with Mr. Martyn. Sabat was there in his Arab dress; there was a thin,
copper-coloured, half-caste gentleman in white nankeen, speaking only
Bengalee; and a Hindoo in full costume, speaking only his native tongue:
so that no two of the party were in similar costume, seven languages were
employed, and moreover the three Orientals viewed it as good breeding to
shout at the very top of their voices.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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