Judson, Adoniram, 1788-1850; Missionaries -- Burma -- Biography; Missionaries -- United States -- Biography
queen along the streets, his heart had throbbed with proud admiration;
and he was almost able to thank God for the trials which had made a
character so intrinsically noble shine forth with such peculiar
brightness. But in this simple, homelike act, this little unpretending
effusion of a loving heart, there was something so touching, so unlike
the part she had just been acting, and yet so illustrative of what she
really was, that he bowed his head upon his knees, and the tears
flowed down to the chains about his ankles. What a happy man he might
have been had this heavy woe been spared them! And what was coming
next? Finally the scene changed, and there came over him a vision of
the past. He saw again the home of his boyhood. His stern, strangely
revered father, his gentle mother, his rosy, curly-haired sister, and
pale young brother were gathered for the noonday meal, and he was once
more among them. And so his fancy revelled there. Finally he lifted
his head. O, the misery that surrounded him! He moved his feet, and
the rattling of the heavy chains was as a death-knell. He thrust the
carefully prepared dinner into the hand of his associate, and as fast
as his fetters would permit, hurried to his own little shed.
“Mr. Judson was not naturally of an even temperament. Hopeful and
earnest he was, beyond most men, and withal very persevering; but at
this period of his life, and up to a much later time, he was subject
to a desponding reaction, from which his faith in God, the ruling
principle of his later years, was not now sufficiently ripe to set him
entirely free. His peculiar mental conformation was eminently active;
so that the passive suffering of his prison discipline was more
galling than to a mind differently constituted. So long as he could
contend with difficulties, he was appalled by nothing; but whatever he
might have been in after-life, he was at this time better fitted to
_do_ than to _endure_. For some time previous to the birth of poor
little Maria, he had been filled with the gloomiest forebodings; and
not without cause. His wife, from the peculiar customs of this land of
semi-civilization, was more alone than she would have been among the
wild Indian women of an American forest; and he could do nothing for
her. When the dreaded crisis was past, and a pale, puny infant of
twenty days was brought to his prison, no person not thoroughly
conversant with the secret springs of feeling which made his the
richest heart that ever beat in human bosom, would be at all able to
appreciate the scene. His first child slept beneath the waters of the
Bay of Bengal, a victim to Anglo-Indian persecution, a baby-martyr,
without the martyr’s conflict; the second, his ‘meek, blue-eyed
Roger,’ had his bed in the jungle graveyard at Rangoon; and here came
the third little wan stranger, to claim the first parental kiss from
the midst of felon chains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account