Judson, Adoniram, 1788-1850; Missionaries -- Burma -- Biography; Missionaries -- United States -- Biography
“Soon after that date, Mee Aa came trembling, one morning, to Mrs.
Wade, with the alarming news that her mother had just arrived at the
landing-place, with the intention, doubtless, of taking her away by
force; and what should she do? She was told to go and meet her mother,
and to pray as she went. But the poor girl need not have been alarmed.
She had been incessantly praying for her mother ever since she had
learned to pray for herself; and God had heard her prayers, and
softened her mother’s heart. So when she heard that her daughter was
actually baptized, she only made up a queer face, like a person
choking, and said, ‘It was _so_, was it not? I hear that some quite
die under the operation.’ This speech we all considered encouraging.
And, accordingly, she soon settled down among us, drank in the truth
from her daughter’s lips, and then followed her example.”
But the most pathetic story of all is that of Mee Shway-ee, a little
child, whom the missionaries rescued from the barbarities of heathenism.
They brought her with them from Amherst. When they first heard of her
she was a slave-girl, five years old. Her master was a Moor. He
afterward turned out to be her own brother, who had formed the
diabolical project of killing her by inches. Mr. Judson got possession
of the little girl by threatening her master with all the penalties of
the English law. Her wretched condition is thus described in Mrs. Wade’s
journal:
“Her little body was wasted to a skeleton, and covered from head to
foot with the marks of a large rattan, and blows from some sharp-edged
thing which left a deep scar. Her master in a rage one day caught her
by the arm, and gave it such a twist as to break the bone, from which
her sufferings were dreadful. Besides, she had a large and very
dreadful burn upon her body, recently inflicted.... She had been
tortured so long that her naturally smiling countenance was the very
picture of grief and despair..... Almost the first words which the
poor little sufferer said to me were, ‘Please to give your slave a
little rice, for I am very hungry.’ She was asked if she had not had
her breakfast; to which she replied: ‘Yes, but I got very little, so
that I am hungry all the day long.’”
The poor little Mee Shway-ee had suffered too much ever to recover. She
survived her release from her master only a few months. She died in the
glad triumphs of the Christian faith. “I am dying,” she said, “but I am
_not afraid_ to die, for Christ will call me up to heaven. He has taken
away all my sins, and I wish to die now, that I may go and see Him.”
Her cruel master received his just deserts. He was thrown into prison,
where, after waiting trial for several months, he was condemned to a
further confinement of four years in irons, and hard labor on the public
works. This dreary prospect broke his spirit, and he managed to put an
end to his wretched life by taking arsenic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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