Sinner that I was! not to have treasured up all his words when I enjoyed and delighted in his presence; improvident wretch! that I did not faithfully record them every night before I went to bed, while they were yet fresh in memory! How many things would I fain recall, which are now irrecoverably lost! How much is there, that if it were possible to call back the days that are past, I would eagerly ask and learn! But the hand of Time is on me. _Non solebat mihi tam velox tempus videri; nunc incredibilis cursus apparet: sive quia admoveri lineas sentio, sive quia attendere cœpi et computare damnum meum._[4] I linger over these precious pages while I write, pausing and pondering in the hope that more recollections may be awakened from their long sleep; that one may jog and stir up another. By thus rummaging in the stores of memory many things which had long been buried there have been brought to light;—but O reader! how little is this all to what it might have been! It is but as a poor armful of gleanings compared to a waggon well piled with full sheaves, carrying the harvest home. [Footnote 4: SENECA.] Here too I may apply with the alteration of only one word what that good man Gotthilf Franck says in his Preface to the History of the Danish Mission in India, as translated into Latin from Niecamp's German Work. _Quamquam vero huic æquo desiderio gratificandi animum tanto promptiorem gessimus, quanto plus ad illustrationem nominis dilecti ex tali compendio redundaturum esse perspeximus, multa tamen impedimenta in dies subnata sunt, quo minus res in effectum dari potuerit. Siquidem ad ejusmodi epitomen accurate conscribendum et res præcipuas breviter complectendas non solum multum temporis, patientiæ et laboris, sed singularis etiam epitomatoris ἱκανοτης et dexteritas requiritur._