to him. He never wastes the clay.]

On and on, if they will let us, time after time, by text and hymn and
story, we have to explain what things really mean before they are able
to understand even a fraction of the truth. The fact that this girl had
thought enough to get her ideas into shape was encouraging, and with
such slender cause for hope we still hoped. But when after some weeks'
visiting she began to see that the question was not one of curries and
seeleys but of inward invisible gifts, her interest died, and she was
"out" when we went, or too busy patting her pots to have time to listen
to us.

Humdrum we have called the work, and humdrum it is. There is nothing
romantic about potters except in poetry, nor is there much of romance
about missions except on platforms and in books. Yet "though it's dull
at whiles," there is joy in the doing of it, there is joy in just
obeying. He said "Go, tell," and we have come and are telling, and we
meet Him as we "go and tell."

But, dear friends, do not, we entreat you, expect to hear of us doing
great things, as an everyday matter of course. Our aim is great--it is
_India for Christ_! and before the gods in possession here, we sing
songs unto Him. But what we say to you is this: Do not expect every true
story to dovetail into some other true story and end with some
marvellous coincidence or miraculous conversion. Most days in real life
end exactly as they began, so far as visible results are concerned.
We do not find, as a rule, when we go to the houses--the literal little
mud houses, I mean, of literal heathendom--that anyone inside has been
praying we might come. I read a missionary story "founded on fact" the
other day, and the things that happened in that story on these lines
were most remarkable. They do not happen here. Practical missionary life
is an unexciting thing. It is not sparkling all over with incident. It
is very prosaic at times.

CHAPTER IV

Correspondences

"It is very pleasant when you are in England, and
you see souls being saved, and you see the
conviction of sin, and you see the power of the
Gospel to bring new life and new joy and purity to
hearts. But it is still more glorious amongst the
heathen to see the same things, to see the Lord
there working His own work of salvation, and to
see the souls convicted and the hearts broken, and
to see there