he prescribed rites, in the appointed place,
but there was no surcease from the endless round of dull misery which
she knew was her ordained lot. Thought J.W.: "I suppose this is a sort
of joining the church, an initiation or something of that sort. Not much
like what happened when I joined the church in Delafield. Everybody was
glad there; here nobody is glad, not even the priest."

At Cawnpore J.W. was able to combine business with his missionary
inquiries. Here he found great woollen and cotton mills, not unlike
those of America, except that in these mills women and children were
working long hours, seven days a week, for a miserable wage. It was
heathenism plus commercialism; that is to say, a double heathenism. For
when business is not tempered by the Christian spirit, it is as pagan as
any cow temple.

In these mills was a possible market for certain sorts of Cummings
goods, as J.W. learned in the business quarter of the city. He wanted
more opportunity to see how the goods he dealt in could be used, and,
having by now learned the path of least resistance, he appealed to a
missionary. It was specially fortunate that he did, for the missionary
introduced him to the secretary of the largest mills in the city, an
Indian Christian with a history.

Now, this is a hint at the story of--well, let us call him Abraham. His
own is another Bible name, of more humble associations, but he deserves
to be called Abraham. Thirty years ago a missionary first evangelized
and then baptized some two hundred villagers--outcasts, untouchables,
social lepers. Being newly become Christians, they deposed their old
village god. The landlord beat them and berated them, but they were done
with the idol. Now, that was no easy adventure of faith, and those who
thus adventured could not hope for material gain. They were more
despised than ever.

Yet inevitably they began to rise in the human scale. The missionary
found one of them a young man of parts. Him he took and taught to read,
to write, to know the Scriptures. He began to be an exhorter; then a
local preacher; and at last he joined the Conference as a Methodist
itinerant at six dollars a month. Now this boy was the father of
Abraham.

As a preacher he opened village schools, and taught the children their
letters, his own boy among them. Abraham learned quickly. A place was
found for him in a mission boarding school. Thence he moved on and up to
Lucknow Christian College. It was thi