.
We will, if our lives are spared, repay the whole, and print the Bible
at our own expense, and I hope the Society will become our creditors by
paying for them when delivered. Mr. Thomas is now preparing letters
for specimens, which I hope will be sent by this conveyance.
"We are under great obligation to Mr. G. Udny for putting us in these
stations. He is a very friendly man and a true Christian. I have no
spirit for politics here; for whatever the East India Company may be in
England, their servants and officers here are very different; we have a
few laws, and nothing to do but to obey." Of his own school he wrote
in 1799 that it consisted of forty boys. "The school would have been
much larger, had we been able to have borne the expense; but, as among
the scholars there are several orphans whom we wholly maintain, we
could not prudently venture on any further expense...The boys have
hitherto learned to read and write, especially parts of the Scriptures,
and to keep accounts. We may now be able to introduce some other
useful branches of knowledge among them...I trust these schools may
tend to promote curiosity and inquisitiveness among the rising
generation; qualities which are seldom found in the natives of Bengal."
The Medical Mission completed the equipment. "I submit it to the
consideration of the Society whether we should not be furnished with
medicines gratis. No medicines will be sold by us, yet the cost of
them enters very deeply into our allowance. The whole supply sent in
the Earl Howe, amounting to L35, besides charges amounting to thirty
per cent., falls on me; but the whole will either be administered to
sick poor, or given to any neighbour who is in want, or used in our own
families. Neighbouring gentlemen have often supplied us. Indeed,
considering the distance we are from medical assistance, the great
expensiveness of it far beyond our ability, and the number of wretched,
afflicted objects whom we continually see and who continually apply for
help, we ought never to sell a pennyworth. Brother Thomas has been the
instrument of saving numbers of lives. His house is constantly
surrounded with the afflicted; and the cures wrought by him would have
gained any physician or surgeon in Europe the most extensive
reputation. We ought to be furnished yearly with at least half a
hundredweight of Jesuit's bark."
Around and as the fruit of the completely organised mission, thus
conducted by the ord
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