n the language, they are bound to their work by so
many tiny cords of love that they seldom fall apart from their work or
fall out one with the other. There are more than sixty different names and
ages among them, and yet they all have one family accent. Some of them are
medical missionaries and can soothe and heal even broken hearts and
prevent broken heads. There are two ladies among them, but they seldom go
about alone, and, especially in Arabia, the men do most of the preaching.
Most of them are evangelists or apostles and teachers. And their
enterprise and push! why one of them told me the other day that he wanted
_"to preach the gospel in the regions beyond"_ Mecca, and that even there
_"every knee should bow to Jesus."_ Why, you begin to see them everywhere
in the Persian Gulf and around Muscat and Aden. Last year a few of them
went to Jiddah with the pilgrims. They dress very plainly, but often in
bright Oriental colours (one just came in all in green); on one or two
occasions I have seen them wear gold when visiting a rich man, but there
was no pride about them, and they put on no airs in their talk.

[Illustration: MISSION HOUSE AT BUSRAH.]

How many are there of these little missionaries, do you ask? Over three
thousand eight hundred and forty visited and left the three stations of
the Arabian Mission in the Persian Gulf last year. But, as I told you,
they are _so_ modest that only a score of them perhaps sent in any account
of their work, and that even was sent through a third party by word of
mouth. I have heard it whispered that a faithful record of all their
journeys and speeches is kept, but that these are put on file to be
published all at once on a certain great day, when missionaries all get
their permanent discharge. What a quiet, patient, faithful, loving body of
workers they are. Even when it is very, very hot, and after a hard day's
work, they never get out of temper as other missionaries sometimes do when
in hot discussion with a bigoted Moslem. And yet how plainly they tell
the truth--they do not even fear a Turkish Pasha; but that is because they
have very cunningly all obtained a Turkish passport and a permit to preach
anywhere unmolested.

Of course, you have guessed my riddle, or else you will want to know what
these missionaries cost and why we do not employ more of them; and who
sent them out, and to what Board they are responsible; and who buys them
new clothes of leather and cloth; and