labour."
_Bishop French, India and Arabia._

THREE friends sat Native fashion on the floor of an Indian verandah. Two
of the three had come out to India for a few months to see the fight as
it is. And they saw it. They now proposed that the third should gather
some letters written from the hot heart of things, and make them into a
book, to the intent that others should see exactly what they had seen.
The third was not sure. The world has many books. Does it want another,
and especially another of the kind this one would be? Brain and time
are needed for all that writing a book means. The third has not much of
either. But the two undertook to do all the most burdensome part of the
business. "Give us the letters, we will make the book," and they urged
reasons which ended in--this.

This, the book, has tried to tell the Truth. That is all it has to say
about itself. The quotations which head the chapters, and which are
meant to be read, not skipped, are more worthful than anything else in
it. They are chosen from the writings of missionaries, who saw the Truth
and who told it.

The story covers about two years. We had come from the eastern side of
this South Indian district, to work for awhile in the south of the
South, the farthest southern outpost of the C.M.S. in India. Chapter II.
plunges into the middle of the beginning. The Band Sisters are the
members of a small Women's Itinerating Band; the girls mentioned by
translated names are the young convert-girls who are with us; the Iyer
is Rev. T. Walker; the Ammal is Mrs. Walker; the Missie Ammal explains
itself.

The Picture-catching Missie Ammal is the friend who proposed the book's
making. This is her Tamil name, given because it describes her as she
struck the Tamil mind. The pictures she caught were not easy to catch.
Reserved and conservative India considered the camera intrusive, and we
were often foiled in getting what we most desired. Even where we were
allowed to catch our object peaceably, it was a case of working under
difficulties which would have daunted a less ardent picture-catcher.
Wherever the camera was set up, there swarms of children sprang into
being, burrowed in and out like rabbits, and scuttled about over
everything, to the confusion of the poor artist, who had to fix focus
and look after the safety of her camera legs at the same time, while the
second Missie Ammal held an umbrella over her head, and the third
exh