was poor and her seeley old, and she thought it would be worth
risking the wrath of her people to get all she knew we should give her
if she came; and this was all her mind.

She had touched a great perplexity. How are we to live in India without
raising desires of this sort? It is true the Brahmans look down upon us,
and the higher Castes certainly do not look up, but to the greater
number of the people we seem rich and grand and desirable to cultivate.
The Ulterior-Object-Society is a fact in South India. We may banish
expensive-looking things from our tables, and all pictures and ornaments
from our walls, and confine ourselves to texts. This certainly helps;
there is less to distract the attention of the people when they come to
see us, and we have so many the fewer things to take care of--a very
great advantage--but it does not go far towards disillusioning them as
to what they imagine is our true position. We are still up above to
them; not on a level, not one of themselves.

The houses we live in are airy and large, and they do not understand the
need of protection from the sun. The food we eat is abundant and good,
and to them it looks luxurious, for they live on rice and vegetable
curry, at a cost of twopence a day. Our walls may be bare, but they are
clean, and the texts aforesaid are not torn at the corners; so, whatever
we say, we are rich.

Identification with the people whom we have come to win is the aim of
many a missionary, but the difficulty always is the same--climate and
customs are dead against it; how can we do it? George Bowen struck at
English life and became a true Indian, so far as he could, but even he
could not go all the way. No matter how far you may go, there is always
a distance you cannot cover--yards or inches it may be, but always that
fatal hiatus. We seem so undeniably up, far up above them in everything,
and we want to get to the lowest step down, low enough down to lift lost
souls up.

[Illustration: "I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he
wrought a work on the wheels." The vessel the potters are making here is
worth about a halfpenny, but it is perfect of its kind. The moulder
never lifts his hand from it from the moment he puts a lump of shapeless
clay on the wheel till the moment he takes it off finished, so far as
the wheel can finish it. If it is "marred," it is "marred _in the hand_
of the potter," and instantly he makes it again another vessel as it
seems good